Instability: Revised Edition
by Steelfeathers
Summary: Post-ROTF. On board the aircraft carrier returning to NEST headquarters, Sam has a slight mental breakdown. NOTE: These chapters are edited, revised, and polished versions of the originals. Some things are VERY different.
1. Down Below

Author's Note:

1) No, I am not taking down the original Instability and replacing it with this. Calm down.

2) Instability WILL STILL BE UPDATED WITH NEW CHAPTERS! THIS iS NOT A RESTART!

2) These are the revised chapters I worked on last semester for my keystone project. For those of you who remember, it's the same project I finally got approved after much sweat and toil.

3) Some things in these chapters will be radically different, and some will be unchanged. For that reason, I wanted to post them as a separate story rather than go and swap them for the original chapters, just in case anyone _likes_ reading the original chapters.

4) At the risk of sounding rude, I don't particularly care if you hate the changes and want me to go back to the way it was before. _I_ prefer the chapters this way, and in my own opinion that's the only thing that really matters. So keep your 'WTF?' flak to yourself. If, however, you have CONSTRUCTIVE comments and criticism, feel free to post them—I want to get a feel for what else I may need to go back and revise. And, hey, if you like these new chapters, by all means tell me so. Positive feedback fuels my inner writer. ;)

5) All nastiness aside, please enjoy!

…..

Bumblebee.

A tiny yellow insect.

A talented alien Scout sent to earth to hunt down the Allspark, the small metal cube that was the source of life for his (its?) entire race.

Even two years after first contact, Sam _still_ didn't know what to make of the humanoid robotic entity he called his 'best friend'. Sure, they may have hung out together every day for hours on end—a feat that was ridiculously easy to accomplish when Bumblebee was impersonating a smokin' hot yellow Camaro—but for all the stories they had swapped and pranks they had pulled, Sam couldn't say he really knew _Bumblebee_.

Rather, as he had slowly come to realize over the months the alien spent pretending to be his car, Sam knew '_Bee'_. The mask.

It took him awhile to figure out the difference—as much as he was ashamed to admit it, some part of him had refused to think of any ROBOT being complex enough to wear a mask. Or to even need one.

The night his newly bought car drove off on its own was the night his universe flipped on its head. There was just something about watching your car _stand up_ and transform into something that could not exist in this world that induced mental paralysis.

After recovering from the shock of watching his dumpy old car split apart and reform into a towering robot, after coming down off the adrenaline high of witnessing said car-turned-robot slug it out with another alien masquerading as a police car, Sam had actually found the alien known as Bumblebee to be friendly. Almost harmless. He played snippets of songs over his radio, did an endearing little dance and clapped expressively. It had almost been like interacting with a child- a happy, bouncy, curious little child.

Boy, had his first impression ever been wrong.

The Autobots— and, by extension, Cybertronians in general— were adept mimics. Chameleons. Coming off of four years skimming the periphery of human society while searching for the Allspark, Bumblebee had adopted the ideal persona to set skittish humans at ease. Play pop songs at full volume. Blow raspberry sound bytes. Bounce on his tires and twiddle the steering wheel playfully. Squirt water to imitate tears. At first Sam had laughed and played along, thinking he had found the coolest co-conspirator ever in the form of an alien robot. After all, what teenage boy didn't dream of befriending an alien and using the super-awesome powers of said alien to prank his friends and take revenge on his enemies? There was also the awe inspiring (maniacal giggle inspiring) factor of even knowing an alien to begin with.

But then reality had come crashing down around their ears. Megatron— leader of the Decepticons and towering harbinger of death— had awoken from cryofreeze beneath the Hoover Dam, leading the Decepticons on a rampage through Mission City to get the Allspark back. And Sam had watched, nerveless with awe (_metal shifting and spinning like thrown knives, a yellow form skating across the asphalt in a shower of sparks—how could something so large move so __**fast**__?_) while the goofy, harmless Camaro flipped from best friend to ruthless warrior as sharply as the tiny _snik_ of the battle mask coming down. Innocent, open features vanished beneath hard, cruel lines of protective metal, and the playful Bee changed into a deadly Hornet. The same hand that patted his back and mussed up his hair burst apart, clicked, whirled, became a cannon that, with a searing blast of turquoise light, blew molten holes in the sides of buildings and other robots.

Not that Sam wasn't worshipfully grateful for the alien's fire power. Quite the opposite, in fact. Floundering and outnumbered in the metal-and-glass firestorm of Mission city, their ragtag assortment of humans and Autobots had almost given way under the pounding assault (_a machine gun barking out beside his ear, worthlessly spewing a staccato hail of bullets that went clinkclinkclinclink against the concrete as they bounced from metal armor without leaving a scratch_), the line that separated the Decepticons from the Allspark nestled in Sam's arms stretching and fraying. And Bee—wonderful, bright, happy Bee—had suffered the brunt of Starscream's wrath. When Sam had first seen the twisted ruin of the Scout's lower legs (metal struts poking out like exposed bone) his throat had closed up, heart squeezing like there was an elephant standing on his chest. _Oh God, his legs are gone_.

Later on, after the fires had been put out and the survivors wrapped in shock blankets, Sam had wondered how simple crushed metal could turn the pit of his gut into a hard vacuum. He'd crumpled soda cans and bent paper clips his whole life—once, on a field trip, he'd even seen an old Impala go through a car compactor, the teenage beast inside him roaring with primal thrill at the sight of something being smashed all to hell. And besides, he had _stacks_ of well-played gory videogames in his room, full of blood and guts and dismemberment. Before seeing the comet trails of falling aliens streaking towards the earth, Sam had been so sure that violence wouldn't faze him.

Bumblebee hadn't bled. No oozing stream of scarlet had come pouring out; no inner organs went splattering across the pavement. He hadn't even screamed.

Yet somehow, watching the robot haltingly drag himself towards Sam using only his arms, those glowing blue optics piercing and so _aware_ (and, perhaps even more frighteningly, aware of _him_), Sam had felt something inside of him cracking apart in horror. It couldn't be real—Bee, his Bee, couldn't be so terribly maimed. The universe wouldn't allow it.

And then Bumblebee had carefully set the Allspark in his arms, metal digits lingering for just a moment against his skin. (_I'll cover you_)

Seeing the determined set of Bee's metal frame, watching as the Autobot scraped together the strength to keep going, keep fighting, Sam knew the alien would die to protect him. And for a split second, feeling as wretched and unworthy as a cockroach, he wondered how he could have ever laughed at the thought of crushing metal. There was nothing funny about it. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Yet underneath his humbled awe, Sam had felt a growing sense of uneasiness.

The way Bumblebee had plunged back into battle with his lower half missing—firing off his cannon from the back of a tow truck to the sound of death metal—had probably distracted the Decepticons just enough to save Sam's life as he went running up to the rooftop to pass the Allspark to a waiting helicopter. But it was as if the buddy you hung out with at school had suddenly taken a hatchet to a group of muggers harassing you in the parking lot- terrifying, and very disturbing. The sheer intensity with which the Bouncing Baby Bumblebee had gazed at him after the battle, body horrendously scarred and wounded, blue optics gleaming with an almost feverish passion, and quietly, solemnly, requested to continue his mission of guardianship had frightened Sam. Where was the happy yellow Camaro he had tentatively begun to call friend?

After a while the unnerving Hornet had submerged again and the quirky, familiar Bee had taken its place. But Sam never forgot. And suddenly every song, every gesture, every word held a sour note of _wrongness_. He itched to peel back the thin top layer of skin on the Bee onion, but didn't quite dare.

Anyone who had spent several thousands of years as a foot soldier in a planet-wide war was bound to have a whole collection of skeletons in the closet.

And now—marooned aboard the metal labyrinth of an aircraft carrier after once more running for his life from the Decepticons—Sam found himself lying awake in the middle of the night, fighting the urge to run to that self-same skeleton-totting best friend.

Another turbulent dream had flung him violently from sleep, leaving him feeling exhausted, knotted up like an old piece of wire twisted one too many times. The past few nights had been just as brutal—so full of unremembered dreams that he scarcely seemed to sleep at all, leaving him groggy and anxious even after ten solid hours of unconsciousness.

Staring up at the darkened metal ceiling _(metal hands reaching down)_, he darted another glance at his watch. It was _still_ 4:13am. Had it really only been less than a minute since the itching crabs of panic had begun to crawl beneath his skin in the wake of the dream?

4:13. Too early to use breakfast in the galley as an excuse to venture out of his room, yet far too late to roll over and hope for a few more hours of darkness. The numbers glared back at him, alien red, staining his sheets and arms in a bloody glow. Stolid. Implacable. Accusing. _('He died for you')_

The watch itself was a 'gift' from a worshipfully grateful government scrambling to cover its ass after maligning the Autobots (_again_), and then watching as they saved the world (_again_).

Sam didn't really think he had done much to help besides run like Forrest Gump, but apparently someone in Washington had labeled him a hero, because the Captain of the aircraft carrier had all but showered him with gifts after the med bay had given him the all-clear.

Like the watch, the clothes crumpled in piles on the floor were not his, but he would rather wear the starchy, impersonal garments than the rags he had worn when he was dragged from the desert. You never knew when a creepy alien artifact was going to tumble out the pockets and totally screw up your day. Becoming a vessel for mystical alien energy after touching the Allspark shard had _not_ been his idea of a fun time, and who knew if a piece of the Matrix he had used to revive Optimus was still clinging to the remains of his tattered shirt. So military style button-up shirt and slacks it was.

Deciding he would rather risk a quick run to the main hanger to check up on the Autobots than another hour or so of staring at the ceiling, Sam rolled out of bed and shrugged on his day clothes. Brown slacks. Belt. Plain white t-shirt. A bomber style jacket, a throwback to the eighties when apparently looking like a dork had been fashionable.

He paused at the door, realized he had left his newly acquired ID card on the small desk rammed into one corner of the room, and turned to retrace his steps. Going back didn't take much effort, though; the distance from the hatch door to the metal desk was only one and a half strides. Sam could pace five steps from the door to the bed, which occupied the back wall, and three steps across the width. There was a tea cup metal sink and a mirror, but no toilet, and the bed could have passed for a slab of concrete.

The lack of a toilet and useable mattress he could deal with—but the cramped, echoing metal space that tended to shrink if he stared at the walls for too long. It was the lack of windows, that was the problem; a Decepticon ambush could happen at any moment and he would never see it coming. He hated the feeling of being blind, of not being able to see the dangers that might have been lurking around them, waiting to creep invisibly from the gloom like fanged sea monsters rising toward the surface. It made him feel like he was trapped in a metal box, slowly sinking...

_(don't think about it don't think about it)_

Shaking himself from head to toe like a dog, Sam scooped the ID badge off the desk, stuffed it down one pocket, and sprinted out the door.

The narrow corridor that connected to his room was just spacious enough to loosen the thorny knot in his chest. The random clanging of machinery and the unrelenting gurgling of white-washed pipes was somehow comforting—this metal was bulky and human and _not alive_. The Decepticons, despite their towering stature, never gave off even a whisper of sound unless screaming or blowing things up.

It also helped that his parents were just beyond the door facing him. The noise of them bumping around, reminding him that they were still alive (_two figures tumbling out onto the scorching sand, bleeding and rumpled—gleaming metal looming overhead, shadows sharp as razors—daddy, why are you cowering?_) often helped him to breathe again when the thorny knot of barbed wired wrapped around his heart squeezed too tightly. Even the violent sobs and screaming fits they had hurled his way in between bone-crushing hugs—and boy, did they verbally let loose with both guns when they realized he wouldn't vanish into a puff a air—brought some measure of relief. He would take the shouting and hair pulling and empty (and not-so-empty) threats any day over silence and flowers and newly carved headstones

Pulling himself from his 4am bleary-eyed thoughts, Sam turned away from his parents' door and set off down the corridor, heeding the siren call the Autobots always seemed to put out. The winding hike to the secondary hanger, so familiar that he frequently found himself traveling down it in his dreams, passed by in a blur of artificial light and the echo of footsteps from metal plating. When he looked up again, he found himself staring down the hallway leading to the enormous rolling door that closed off the hanger from the rest of the aircraft carrier

Two guards stood sentry outside the door. In another time, another life, the guns they held at the ready would have seemed impressive, and maybe more than a little intimidating. But now that he had been shot at with guns larger than their whole bodies, their G.I. Joe replicas just seemed silly in comparison.

Not in the mood for arguing with the pair of grunts, fearing that he might start screaming and never stop if he opened his mouth, he flashed his ID card and continued striding toward the door without pause. Just let them try to stop him. Just let them.

Luckily they seemed to have been forewarned that he might come to visit and let him pass without a fuss.

He didn't know what he expected to find on the other side. A bunch of robots lazying around, sitting on crates and gossiping in that dial-tone language of theirs? A giant alien robot orgy? (A slightly hysterical giggle).

Instead he discovered a scene reminiscent of the infamous Trashing Of The Backyard night, when all the newly-arrived Autobots had mistaken his backyard for a good place to hide- a veritable truck stop. The fighter jets that normally occupied the hanger had been pushed off to one side, clearing a gleaming metal field for the alien passengers. And huddled together in the

middle of the space sat an eclectic array of vehicles that would have put any car show to shame if they hadn't been covered with scratches and desert grit. A neon search-and-rescue Hummer. A hulking black Topkick pickup. A monstrous blue truck decorated with red flames. And closest to the door, as if knowing he would show up, sat a yellow Camaro with black racing stripes.

'Bumblebee.'

He hesitated in the doorway, wondering if he was interrupting their recharge cycle or something. Then, when he felt a stab of selfish disappointment at the thought of having to turn right back around and leave, he gave himself a vicious mental kick.

He shouldn't have been surprised that they weren't waiting for him. They _had_ just emerged from the figurative pit of hell and deserved a few days to sleep it off without being bothered. They also had no way of knowing that he was coming at that exact moment to see them, to assure himself that they were, in fact, all in one piece. Just glimpsing the familiar, if a bit worn and dirty, shapes eased the coiling monster in his chest that had tried to choke him the entire trip down to the hanger.

He didn't want to leave. He wanted to continue to bask in their calm presence, even if they were not aware of him. It had been so close, so close. A miracle, really, that they weren't hauling at least one giant hunk of scrap metal. His eyes were drawn to the imposing presence of Optimus Prime who managed, even when in truck form, to radiate an aura of power and authority—underlaid, Sam glimpsed occasionally, with kindness…and sadness. He winced at the visible damage to the exoskeleton—at the numerous dents, gashes, and mangled components that reminded him hauntingly of Bumblebee and the car compactor—sending up another thankful prayer for the shining moment when the alien leader had coughed back to life on the desert floor, resurrecting hope and light with him.

Natural shyness had him withdrawing into the doorway. They were his friends, yes, but they were also nearly immortal aliens with unimaginable power and intelligence. They could smash through buildings like they were cardboard boxes and pull up hundred-year-old oak trees to use as clubs. Their day dreams could probably put Einstein to shame. Heck, even Bumblebee, the youngest of the group, made the pyramids seem like shiny new toys!

They certainly didn't need a twitchy, all-around-average human breathing down their necks.

He turned to go.

"Sam."

The familiar, gentle voice stopped him in his tracks. He turned slowly to face the heavily scratched Camaro.

"Hey, Bee," he answered softly.


	2. Unease

As he slowly turned to take in Bee's motionless form, his mind flashed once again to the deadly Hornet he knew to be lurking beneath the innocent yellow façade. It was hard to reconcile the scratched, docile, inanimate car before him with the merciless, uncannily graceful defender that had only days before smashed in the face of one demented robot and ripped the spine from a second. What do you say to your savior? How do you prove yourself to someone who would come running at your panicked call and kill for you without a second thought?

"So...What's up?" Not the most brilliant thing that had ever come out of his mouth.

But Bee didn't seem to mind the laid-back greeting. With a barely audible rumble he started his engine and rolled forward until his front bumper was barely six inches from Sam's shins.

"At the moment? The ceiling."

The sound of Bee's actual voice rather than a canned snippet of dialogue raised his spirits. A little. Contact with the Allspark over a year before had healed whatever damage had prevented the Scout from speaking in anything but rasping wheezes when they had first met. Like all the Autobots, Bee's voice was smooth, measured, masculine. Sam had wondered about that, at first. If the robots were genderless, when did all their voices posses a distinctly male inflection?

But when Sam finally found the chance to ask his guardian, the answer he received was simple, if troubling in its starkness of perception- to humans, male voices carried more power, authority and, ultimately, more credibility. The sad thing was, he had to concede that they were right. If Optimus had started speaking with a woman's voice when they first met, he might not have been as inclined to follow his instructions as if they were the word of God.

"Hardy har-har. Like I haven't heard _that_ one before," He glanced nervously to the other vehicles sitting silently nearby. He kept his voice low, hoping not to wake them if they were trying to sleep. Recharge. Whatever.

"There is no need for reticence. Your presence does not disturb us."

Sam jumped slightly at the interjection from Ratchet, the Hummer search and rescue vehicle sandwiched between a black Topkick and a Peterbilt truck. Its dark interior disturbed him a little. Like talking to a ghost. (_And ghosts have a habit of coming back, don't they? Megatron was dead dead dead and then he was alive again...)_

Then he blushed faintly, feeling stupid. Of course Ratchet was awake. His mere footsteps were loud enough to alert the medic's audio sensors to his entrance; he had known he was there probably from the time he had stepped into the hallway.

"Uh...right." He hesitated, swallowing thickly. "I guess I just wanted to see if you guys were okay." Then, suddenly fearing that an implication of weakness might be seen as an insult, he added, "Not that there's any reason for you to _not_ be okay—you guys are awesome, after all, no reason why you shouldn't be able to tangle with the Decepicons and come out on top—"

"Sam, what is the matter?" Bee interrupted him softly, inching forward until Sam could feel the warm, vibrating metal pressing up against his legs.

_What's the matter?_ Everything. Nothing. No one had died, they were all still together in one piece, but it had been so close to being a planet-ending disaster that he could still taste the bitter bile of fear, a yawning chasm of hopelessness and despair opening up to swallow him whole. There had been so much blood, so much pain, so much fear and desperation and keeprunningkeeprunning that it had soaked in like a sponge and _wouldn't go away-_-

He swallowed. Hard. "Nothing. Nothing's the matter. I'm cool."

"I still do not understand the purpose of such a nonsensical phrase," the black topkick, Ironhide, huffed out, grinding his tires back and forth, "Your body temperature has remained a constant 98.623 degrees, indicating that no 'cooling' has taken place."

Sam gave a weak little chuckle. "I can't believe no one's explained it to you yet, what with all the time you spend hanging out with us humans and all. What I mean is, I'm-" (don't grimace, don't grimace) "-fine."

The feel of Bee's bumper against his shins began to make his skin crawl. He took a minute step back, relieved when the disguised transformer did not follow him.

"So...how are you guys holding up? Aside from the obvious dents," he forced his voice to remain steady, keeping his eyes fixed on the crescent of steering wheel he could see through Bumblebee's windshield no matter how they itched to slip away and linger on a certain flame-decorated truck. (-_dead dead dead, all to save me, not running even from two, three, four decepticons all at once, a defiant 'I'll take you all on!' ringing out like a trumpet, a battle cry as he went to the cross_-)

He drew in a deep breath. Held it, fluttering, in his chest. Scanned the walls, the ceiling. "Sorry they stuck you in here. Can't say I like what the interior decorator did with the place. Still, at least you don't have to put up with curious sailors staring at you all the time."

"Our injuries were, for the most part, minor, Sam. Ratchet patched us up, and our internal repair systems are taking care of the rest," Bee soothed, ignoring his attempt at misdirection.

Ratchet made a sound suspiciously like a snort. "Still, it will be better when we finally reach NEST headquarters in Diego Garcia. I do not have access to all the materials I need to complete all the repairs on board this ship, but I did manage to convince them to set up a rudimentary medical bay back at base. It is not as advanced as I would prefer, but it will certainly serve to get the job done."

Sensing an undercurrent of anxiety to the words, Sam could not help but dart a glance to the imposing truck form of Optimus Prime. His stomach folded itself into knots at the horror-filled thought that he had not yet spoken _because he could not speak_. Not quite daring to ask outright, and hoping beyond hope that the other Autobots would not sit there calmly conversing with him if their leader were in immediate danger of dying once more, he deliberately misunderstood the implied urgency.

"Are we in danger of Starscream swooping in and taking pot shots at us when there's nowhere for us to go but the bottom of the ocean?"

Even as the words bubbled up through his throat he dreaded the response.

"No," Ironhide huffed, "'Screamer may be one scary bastard on the battle field, but in general he's a coward. Neither he nor Megatron left without serious injuries, I made sure of that. They won't risk an attack unless they're sure they can win, and with only two of them even moving about, half of us could probably sit out the fight and we'd still win."

"Oh. Well, good."

"_'Have no fear, have no fear_,'" Bee chirruped, "_'I'll take care of you, kid!_'"

The heavy, laden parasite in his chest began to writhe and squirm.

"We will protect you and your family, Sam," Optimus Prime intoned firmly, causing Sam to flinch violently in a sort of whole body jerk. He hadn't realized the powerful Autobot was even aware of their conversation. But along with the shock came a profound sense of relief. Muscles he hadn't even realized were clenched slowly relaxed. He didn't know much about robo-anatomy, but he assumed that some basic principles were universal; talking = conscious = not-on-death's-door.

Optimus' tone changed, growing softer, carrying a note of solemn promise that seemed inexplicably regretful. "You need never fear Decepticons again."

A crushing flood of guilt washed over a mental dam and drowned him in the frothing tide, images of Optimus throwing himself at a horde of Decepitcons to save his puny human hide searing through his mind. His stomach soured; he fought back the urge to throw up. Aware of the flushing red coloring his ears he turned to studying his hands, picking at the mitten-like bandage covering the burn he'd acquired when Jetfire had done that freaky light show that dumped them in Eygpt.

_(-Dead, all dead—so brave and loyal and wonderful, and now they're all dead—)_

He murmured softly, "It's not Decepticons I'm afraid of."

He never saw Bumblebee move, it happened so fast. One moment there was a car before him and the next- flashing, whirling parts spinning outward; sliding, clunking, reforming- he was staring up at a super-advanced alien robot (way too advanced to be Japanese). Having reverted to his natural form, Bee lowered himself until they were face to face, boy to robot, one alien to another.

"Sam," for the first time in months, Bee's voice emerged strained, "there is no need to be afraid of us. We would never, _ever_, hurt you."

Sam jerked his head up, stunned by the words. Gobsmacked that his whispered comment had been interpreted in such a manner, he responded without thinking.

"Maybe not on_ purpose_-"

This time, Bumblebee jerked away from _him_. And hearing the short, mournful whine the yellow Autobot gave, his mobile antenna flattening to his helmet, Sam felt truly sickened with himself. A large hand reached out to him (a comforting finger resting on his shoulder, hand wrapped around his side and cupping his back, stargazing together- which one is Cybertron?) but pulled away again slowly before making contact, fingers curling inward.

"No, wait! That's not...that's not what I meant. I wasn't talking about you guys!"

"And yet you _are_ afraid of us," Bee said quietly, voice only a whisper of sound. His radio was dead. Utterly dead.

Sam wanted to deny it. Needed to deny it with the same itching, burning compulsion that had driven him to the hanger hold in the first place. He even opened his mouth to do just that. But for some reason his proclamation of unwavering faith got twisted around on the journey from his mind to his tongue and became, "Look, my conscious and subconscious are so mixed up right now I don't know _what_ I'm afraid of, okay?"

"Hey Sam!"

For the second time that morning, he spasmed as though tasered. Turning on his heel he found Mikaela standing in the doorway looking sleep-rumpled, irritated, and utterly gorgeous.

"Um. Hey, Mikaela." Mr. Smooth Operator.

"Everyone's been looking for you, Sam. Why didn't you come to breakfast?"

It was breakfast time already? Just how long had he spent wandering the halls?

"Because I was here, obviously."

She only rolled her eyes and smiled indulgently, sauntering forward to grasp her mentally impaired boyfriend by the sleeve and tug him along after her, back towards the door.

"We'll see you guys later at the debriefing," she tossed to the Autobots, "I have to go make sure my absent-minded boyfriend eats something before all that's left is congealing bacon grease. Later."

Sam twisted to look back over his shoulder, heart contracting painfully at the sorrowful hunch to Bumblebee's frame. "Yeah. Like she said. Bye, Bee," he added softly.

The door closed, cutting off the view. He resisted the urge to bang his head into it until it left a dent or two.

…..

The mess hall was crowded, but not so crowded that they couldn't find two seats together. Unfortunately, they ended up at the same table as Simmons and Galloway, th neurotic ex-government agent and the viciously petty senator. Sam groaned as Mikaela began to bee-line for the two losers, tray held like a battering ram before her. Catching up, he playfully bumped his hip into hers and leaned down to whisper in her ear.

"Come on, 'Kaela. Simmons? _Simmons_? Let's go find someplace else."

"There IS no place else, Sam," she responded loudly, loud enough for the two adult losers to hear, a touch of agitation coloring her tone. With a resigned sigh he set his tray on the metal table top and seated himself beside his girl friend. _(..'Sam! Do you hear me! I said I love you!'...)_

"Ah, look who's deigned to come sit with us mere mortals!" Simmons observed mockingly, "It's resurrection boy and his hotty girlfriend!"

Sam graced him with a lukewarm glare before turning his attention to opening his carton of orange juice. He liked orange juice. Every morning he could get it, he used it to wash down a granola bar before darting off to class or to Miles' house. It energized him more than coffee without making him spaz out like he was high. His mom encouraged him to drink it because of all the health magazine articles she had read about the benefits of vitamin C. He humored her and pretended to choke it down for her sake when really he would have drunk it any way, without any vitamins at all. It made her happy and proud of him, so he supposed it was worth it to play along.

But when he peeled open the white lip of cardboard he froze. Orange juice, contrary to its name, was not actually orange. It was yellow. Yellow like Bumblebee's armor. (-_Bursts of energy exploding like bombs, louder than fireworks, hot enough to melt steel, valiant yellow melting, melting, sloughing away into the sand-)_

"Sam, you okay?"

Mikaela's fingers ghosted over the back of his hand. He blinked, realizing he'd been staring down into his carton of juice for a long time. Slowly, he folded it closed again and pushed it away from him, all the way to the other side of the table. '_I'm losing my mind.'_

He looked up to see Simmons watching him with a guarded expression, but when the ex-agent felt his gaze he returned his attention to mutilating an egg on his plate.

"Don't go all loco on us, kid. You, her, and that jar head Lennox seem to be the only ones the big guys trust," he advised sternly, pointing him into submission with a fork.

"Which is ludicrous, considering he's a teenager," Galloway ranted mulishly in return.

"Hey! I'll have you know I'm eighteen. I can smoke and buy a house and everything."

The sallow-faced politician, resembling nothing so much as a rumpled vulture swimming in a garish 80's jacket not unlike his own, hacked at his own breakfast without looking at them. "Oh yes. Because both of those things make one _so_ mature."

Simmons looked at him. "You _did_ go see that shrink, right robo-boy?"

Sam pulled a face around a bite of bacon. At any other time it would have been pretty good. But for some reason, he felt like he was chewing wet cotton. Completely tasteless.

Worried that being caught up in a fire-fight with thirty-foot-tall aliens bent on rending you limb from limb and destroying your planet would cause some amount of psychological stress, a faceless bureaucrat had made an hour-long counseling session with an onboard shrink a requirement for every human member of the survival party. If they had thought they could have pressed the Autobots into obeying them, they probably would have requested that the alien robots do the same (snicker). Sam would have almost taken facing the demented little Decepticon Frenzy again to get out of it. Almost.

When his turn had come, he entered the closet-sized office with as much trepidation as a doomed man presenting himself to the firing squad. The hospital-green walls and musty old couches crammed into the space did little to put him at ease. Neither did the plastic smile of the thirty-something woman behind the laminated desk.

She asked him his name. He told her.

She asked him about his childhood. He told her.

She asked him about how he met the Autobots. With only slight hesitation, he told her. If she was asking to begin with, she must have already been given the security clearance to hear the tale.

She asked him how he was feeling. He stared at her. Then he laughed. Laughed a hollow, sharp-edged laugh.

How could tell her something she could and would _never_ understand, something not even HE understood? How could he tell her that he hated being told to 'rest,' because 'resting' left him with nothing to occupy his mind, and being alone with his thoughts was a Very Bad Thing. They kept showing him things. Things like Blood. Like Splattered gray globs of brain. Severed limbs. And things she would never have even considered to spout off about; Bumblebee-Ratchet-Optimus-Ironhide-Bumblebee-Bee-Bee-Bee struggling, dying, parts torn away and falling off, crawling, crawling, from the laughing, twisting shadows looming above, electric wails of fear, screaming—

Eventually he got sick of her trying to pick apart his mind like he was some lab specimen, asking him to just tell her everything like she was his best friend (_Bee. Bee._ Bumblebeeeeee!) and not some complete stranger who really didn't give a damn and whose whole world existed inside a text book. If _she_ could have been there- if _she_ could have run with him through Mission city, dodging debris and fireballs and human body parts; if _she_ could have played hide-and-seek with him against a mob of blood-thirsty Decepticons in an Egyptian shanty town; if _she_ could have been the one for whom the greatest, kindest person in the universe had given his robotic life while she could do nothing but watch in horror…well, she wouldn't have been asking him any questions. She wouldn't have anything to say. Anything at all.

All told, the only thing his 'therapy' session had accomplished was to give him the firm conviction that there was someone in middle management who owed him an hour of his life back.

"Yeah. I did." Sam shrugged, "Fat lot of good it did me."

Galloway scowled. "You probably weren't even trying. It's not a miracle cure, you know. You have to work at it."

His hand tightened around his fork until he thought it would bend in half. He looked up with a half smile, tendons standing out on his arm, and replied cheerfully, "You are absolutely correct. I didn't try at all! Maybe I'll schedule in some acupuncture next, you know," he shrugged again, scrunching up his face in a jovial expression of thoughtfulness, "Just to say I've done every piece of useless bull shit I possibly can. I'll hire a feng shui guy right after that to round out the list. And if I can find a carnival psychic, I'll throw him in too."

"Sam!" Mikaela hissed at him. Her livid expression surprised him, but it only added fuel to the fire.

"Don't you agree? I mean, I don't know about you guys, but somehow talking about my 'feelings' doesn't make the world go back to being happy smiling rainbows and unicorns."

"That's it," With shocking vehemence, Mikaela slammed her cup down on the table, pushed her chair back and stood up, "If you're going to act like a spoiled brat who wants to go cut his wrists in the bathroom every time something bad happens, I don't want to eat breakfast with you anymore."

Feeling like a runaway plane that had just flown into a boiling thunderstorm without realizing it, Sam found all his ire draining out of him.

"Mikaela, wait!" He reached for her arm as she snatched up her tray in preparation of stalking off. Some little part of him glowed with happiness that she did not jerk away from his touch. Sighing deeply, he slipped his hand around her wrist and gently rubbed the dip in her palm with his thumb, feeling her rapid heartbeat beneath his touch. "I'm sorry, okay? What's wrong? You've been wound up all morning."

Shaking her head, she reluctantly folded herself back into the chair beside him, rotating her arm so that they clasped hands beneath the table.

"Not ALL morning," she corrected grumpily. The ice in her eyes thawed with warmth as she looked at him, but as she grudgingly turned to face Galloway they hardened over again. "HE can tell you what's wrong with me."

Looking affronted, the older man brought a fist down on the table. "Now look here, I haven't the faintest idea what's caused all this madness-" he indicated with a waved hand the mess hall in general, "-but I assure you it has nothing to do with me."

Simmons, looking far too gleeful at the lovers' spat, glanced at Galloway before raising a lewd eyebrow in Mikaela's direction.

"Something you're not telling your boyfriend, girly?"

A glare hot enough to melt Decepticon armor washed over him without apparent effect.

"Get your prevented mind out of the gutter," she turned her heat vision on Galloway, "Does the word 'debriefing' ring any bells?"

Now looking confused, affronted, and mildly disturbed all at the same time, he glanced between Sam and Mikaela without comprehension.

"Well, yes! Debriefing is standard procedure after the completion of any military mission. When the situation calls for it, all civilians that are deeply involved are included as well. But what does-"

Rolling her eyes, Mikaela turned away from him to face Sam head on. He gulped, not liking the sympathy-filled look on her face. She normally only used it on little kids, dogs, and tiny Decepticon spies she was threatening with a welding torch.

"You can't go back to college, Sam."


	3. Red Bottle, Blue Bottle

Never let it be said that Mikaela liked to beat around the bush.

Sam croaked incoherently for a moment, then managed to eke out, "What? _Why_?"

She shook her head, reaching for his hands and squeezing, hard. "I don't know. I couldn't find out more than that. It must be classified or something."

Feeling as though someone had just knocked his chair out from under him, he looked from Mikaela to Simmons to Galloway and back again. A disbelieving grin crept across his face, and he huffed out a breathless chuckle.

"What, is missing the first week of school punishable by expulsion or something? Did my parents not foot the bill on time and they decided to put me on probation?"

"Even those two aren't dumb enough not to know how to sign their names to a check," Simmons sneered. Sam rounded on him.

"Hey! You leave me parents out of it! Remember that rule, 'if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all'? Well, that's what we're going to do here," he motioned to all the occupants of the table with a circular window-washing motion, "Only positive vibes allowed."

"Sam," the feel of a warm body leaning towards him refocused his gaze on Mikaela, "_I _don't know why they don't want you going back to college, but supposedly they're going to tell us at the debriefing."

Maintaining his upbeat grin with furious determination, he concentrated on trying to breathe around the stone lodged in his chest. Normalcy: college, parties, tests, marriage, kids. Was that too much to ask? Never mind that he'd only saved the world TWICE and all. The floor just kept tilting away beneath his feet with no indication that it would ever right itself.

"Great, so when is it?"

Mikaela dropped his hands and leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms over chest. The raised eyebrow clearly indicated that she wasn't buying his upbeat act for a moment.

"At ten. They want us to meet in conference room 52 on level 3 so they can pick our brains about what happened and how, precisely, one of the eight wonders of the world ended up a pile of bricks."

"Not to mention the fact that the cat's out of the bag now!" Simmons intoned with a distinctly accusatory air. "Everyone in the world saw that nasty robot piece of work announcing the end of existence on network television! There's going to be hell to pay, that's for sure-" he aimed a predatory glance at a suddenly nervous Galloway, "-and more than a few head are going to roll."

"Why have the debriefing now, then?" Sam asked in confusion. Three sets of eyes turned to look at him, expressions clearly stating when they thought of his IQ for asking such a question. Sam shook his head. "I mean, why didn't they have it as soon as everyone was discharged for the infirmary? Why did they wait a few days?"

Simmons took a noisy slurp of coffee. "It's all thanks to you, matrix boy. Those big alien friends of yours insisted that stopping a worldwide outbreak of terror could wait until everyone was absolutely positive that you weren't going to drop dead of a heart attack!"

An unexpected surge of fury flooded Sam's face with heat. Hadn't he survived this far? Hadn't he done what they could not, without armor or guns or giant glowing swords? He accepted that, as a human, he was physically (and perhaps mentally) inferior to the alien visitors, but assuming he was going to stress himself into a heart attack was downright insulting.

"I'm not_ that _fragile!" He spat.

Galloway gave him a strange look. "Well obviously you weren't enrolled in a medical program, either, because if you _had_ you would know that anyone who has just suffered a near death experience and been revived via defibrillator is in danger of a post-trauma relapse: i.e, a heart attack."

And just like that, all the air left his rapidly swelling balloon of righteous indignation with a small farting noise.

"Oh."

With all the other dramatic events that had taken place during the feverish rush to stop the Fallen from activating the Energon harvester and destroying the sun, Sam tended to forget that he had been dead for a little over two minutes. Somehow, it just didn't seem as important as Optimus coming back to life, or even as important as the sight of a five thousand year old pyramid being _eaten_ by a mammoth Decepticon whose sucking, whirlwind mouth topped every one of his blackest nightmares. He didn't even really remember that much of it—just a feeling of levitating up towards the white-hot spotlight of the sun while Mikaela bent over him, screaming.

('_Do you hear me? I said I love you!'_)

Sometimes, on the hazy edge between sleeping and waking, fragments of images would float through his mind, showing him flashes of tall, inhuman figures surrounded by a calming white light that shone more brilliantly than the sun. The figures whispered to him in his dreams, though he could never remember what they had said when he opened his eyes. Something about a great destiny—

Sam abruptly grimaced, his gut cramming itself into a hard little knot at the thought of a 'great destiny,' his mind circling back to Mikaela's cannonball revelation. It hurt more than he would have imagined to realize that now, without college, he wouldn't _have_ a 'great destiny.' Optimus' death, in comparison, had hurt like a sudden hole blown through his chest- he kept walking, kept moving, kept living, but a large part of him ached and sobbed with emptiness (itsallmyfaultitsallmyfault). _This_, however, conjured a different type of pain. The thought that he would not be able to return to college, get a degree, _make_ something of his life, hurt the way an invisible fist squeezing his insides together might.

But suddenly, a tiny spark of determination flashed through his soul like the gleam of a switchblade being flipped open. All his life he had been told that his plans would not work, that the things he wanted to do could not be done. You can't play basketball, Sam, you're too short. You can't try to get Mikaela, man, Trent will kick your ass. You can't have your alien car back, Mr. Witwicky, you're too young to understand what you're dealing with.

You can't hide the Allspark from me, fleshling, there's no where left to run.

You can't find the Matrix, Sam, it's impossible.

You can't bring Optimus back to life—Wishing for something to be true won't make it true.

Yet despite the objections, the condescending looks, the alien robots taking pot-shots at him from rooftops, Sam had always found a way to answer '_I __**can**_.'

This couldn't be any different. He wouldn't let it.

You can't go back to college, Sam.

'Watch me.'

Taking a deep breath in through his nose, Sam replied levelly, "They may have their reasons for not wanting me to go back to college, but they have no right to stop me. I paid for it, didn't I? Well, my parents did, but that's not the point. The government can't just step in and tell me I can't go back!"

Galloway's expression darkened.

"Young man," the politician began, working for a thunderous tone but ending up with something closer to nagging, "I don't know what shenanigans you and your alien buddies have gotten up to in the past-"

"Here we go," Mikaela muttered, propping up her chin with one hand.

"And you mind your manners, young lady! -I don't know what rules you've broken in the past, Mr. McWilly, and frankly I don't care. But what we're dealing with here is very serious business! Can you even comprehend the sheer magnitude of what has occurred? Everyone knows your little secret, now, and all those taxpayers whose money is going into funding your friends' globe-trotting romps are going to wonder if it's a worthwhile investment! Not to mention all the foreign nations that are going to question if we plan to turn these alien weapons on them- they might just launch nuclear missiles on the US as a preemptive strike!" He paused for breath, crouching forward to spear him with a well-manicured finger, "So you _damn well_ better do whatever they tell you to do, because it may just save your own life as well as millions of others!"

Sam stood slowly and picked up his tray, feeling as though he had just been flash frozen in liquid nitrogen. His rib cage wouldn't expand, but suddenly he didn't feel the need to breathe. The dark, empty stare he leveled on the petty-minded man was utterly cold. He hadn't hated Megatron, not even after the evil alien killed Optimus. All he had felt was terror, terror and the animal need to_ flee_ from a predator. For a while, he had naively thought he lacked the ability to hate. But now he knew otherwise, and for the barest sliver of an instant he hated Galloway with a passion that frightened him to the core. How DARE the man accuse him on not comprehending the danger when _he_ had never been the target of over a dozen enraged aliens that could each destroy a city without straining a muscle cable, aliens that had sought above all else to crush him into a pulp? _He_ had never heard the sickening crunch of bone as a human was flicked aside like an annoying bug. _He_ had never had to look into the face of evil and defy it, knowing that defiance meant certain death!

There were many things Sam could have said or done, most of which would have been very gratifying but not very mature. But instead, he merely said calmly, "No."

And he turned towards the tray busing station, fully intending to leave without ever looking back. He refused to give the man the satisfaction of seeing him tremble. "Come on, Mikaela. Let's go hang out Bee and the others."

"Yes, _do_ go skipping off to see your alien friends," Galloway called after him, the elevated tone of his voice causing more than a few heads to swivel in his direction. The hair on the back of Sam's neck began to prickle as the curious stares fell heavily on his wooden form. "And while you're there, inform them that that their days as free agents are numbered!"

Unable to take another step, Sam came to an abrupt halt. His knuckles whitened on the edge of his tray. An anchoring touch brushed his arm as Mikaela pulled up alongside him.

"No problem," he ground out, astonished that his voice remained level and even pleasant, "And while I'm at it, I'll deliver the lace-trimmed invitations to come take over the world to the decepticons."

"The_ 'decepticons' _would not even be an issue if Sector Seven had simply finished what it started with that yellow one-"

Before the words had finished leaving the senator's mouth, a strange buzzing filled Sam's ears and blocked out the riotous noise of the mess hall. Without even being aware of moving, he flung himself around and lunged towards Galloway. The tray in his hands came up, and with every scrap of strength in his body he brought it swinging around and smashed it into the side of the startled man's head. Globs of food splattered their clothes and slopped across the table, the tray following the meal in quick succession as Sam abandoned it in favor of fisting his hands in the front of the man's shirt. Though Galloway had at least three inches and twenty pounds on him, Sam hauled the politician from his chair, toppling it with a clatter, and slammed him into the wall as if he were little more than a sack of flour.

As frantic hands started to grasp his shoulders, pry at his fists, he became aware by parts of a sordid litany pouring from his throat and over his tongue and teeth- _I'll kill you! You hurt him and I'll kill you! I'll kill you, you sorry bastard!_

"Sam, stop! Stop!" Mikaela.

Blink. The world came back into focus.

Sam realized that he was panting, snorting in breath after breath through his nose. Icy sweat stood out on his temples and trailed a slick line between his shoulder blades. Little by little his fists unclenched, and suddenly firm, insistent hands were pulling him away, sandwiching him between Mikaela on one side and Simmons on the other. He was still shaking like a hyperactive rat jazzed up on speed, still hearing the long-faded echoes of metallic screams and fighting the bitter sting of cryo guns to no avail while the gentle, friendly yellow robot continued to thrash and wail, clawing the concrete, but it was so _cold_ and he couldn't reach him and no matter how he fought, he wasn't strong enough to stop them, to stop the torture, and still the sacrificial lamb _screamed_-

His mouth opened. "If you hurt them, I'll kill you." Calm. Utterly cold. He stared deep into Galloway's wide, fearful eyes and repeated the solemn promise. "I'll kill you."

Mikaela was saying something, fingers pulling at him, leading him away like she would soothe a snarling dog, but the words dropped through the air without impression, uninteresting as pieces of gravel. He couldn't hear her voice, or feel her touch, or smell the raspberries of her hair. The world had dissolved into pounding white static, and he was adrift in the fog. Crawling, itching, insatiable need overcame him again, filling him with the need to get away. There were too many people, too many stares cherishing him, hating him, ignoring him, fearing him.

With a sudden burst of will he wrenched himself away from the grasping cage of hands. He pushed back through the crowd, startled when it yielded to let him pass (_black gloved hands restraining, throwing him back- Bumblebeeee!)._

"Sam, wait!"

He whirled and fled.

Metal lined halls narrowed before him, all stark angles and primitive technology that buzzed beneath the fluorescent lights. His pounding footsteps reverberated from the low ceilings- the snare drum beat to the wild, fluttering rag-time of his heart. Sometime between sprinting from the mess hall and skidding around the first two corners, a giant magnet of unknown design had started up deep in the bowels of the ship. It pulled at his heart and soul like gravity, teasing him at every stairwell he passed, calling him to familiar leather seats and shining blue optics that gazed at him with some emotion he dared not name. But ever the champion of heroic efforts, he resisted the siren song, blundering wildly through the winding labyrinth until he could no longer hear the chorus of voices calling after him. Even then he ran for a little while longer before finally slowing to a stop.

Glancing down at himself, the inane thought bubbled up in Sam's mind that ketchup and eggs made for an interesting fabric die. Leaning against the wall, he plucked his shirt away from his body and made a few feeble swipes at the leftovers festooning his government-issue clothes (anything to keep from swiping at his eyes- tears are like the monsters under the bed, pretend they're not there and they'll go away). Quickly realizing his efforts were a lost cause without soap and running water, he struck out to find a washroom (_wash away the blood, wash it away like it never existed)._

Finding a toilet on an air craft carrier was a notoriously difficult undertaking. But luck was on his side, and he gratefully ducked into a bathroom only two hallways away, surprising himself with how giddy the fact that the mirror was not cracked made him. The bathroom itself could have fit inside the average closet. Only the basic amenities were included: a single stall and a urinal. And a sink.

The water came out of the tap lukewarm. Foggy memories of lectures from his mom on using cold water when removing stains came creeping out of the wood work, yet at the moment he could not muster the effort to care. He snatched a handful of paper towels to serve as a rag, shrugged out of his jacket and pulled his shirt up over his head. Oh yeah. Eggs and ketchup made the raunchiest puke-orange this side of the seventies. If he ever saw Miles again, he would have to tell him that for his next tie-dying project.

He pressed his palm into the soap dispenser. No soap. Uselessly rattling the thing didn't make any spontaneously appear, either. Deciding to hell with it, he plunged his shirt beneath the stream of water and started viciously scrubbing.

His jacket, crumpled on the floor, began to play 'Shake your Groove Thing' not a minute later. He ignored it.

After an eternity the song fell silent, then started up again. Sam kept scrubbing.

Unfortunately, lukewarm water alone seemed to do no more than make his shirt wet and un-wearable. He needed to find some soap. (_needed to run run run- run boy, death's snapping at your heels!)_

Not bothering to ring out his shirt, Sam turned off the water, scooped up his jacket and pulled out the blackberry vibrating like the energizer bunny on crack in his pocket. Another gift from the government. Not that he had wanted or needed a blackberry, but hey, if they were giving away freebies he was more than willing to take them off their hands. He pushed the talk button and held it to his face, flinging open the door to the bathroom and striding back out into the cramped hallway. (_nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, 'I smell you, boy!')_

Ignoring the tiny, familiar voice that immediately began speaking when he pressed the talk button, he skipped the customary hellos and gushed cheerfully, "Sorry, Mikaela. I'm a little busy right now, trying to wash my shirt and all. Talk to you later." Without waiting for a response he hung up. And switched the phone off.

Now, where to find a janitor's closet? He tried every door he came to, finding most of them locked and once more cursing the limitations of his guest card. Those few that did open led to other hallways or rooms whose function he could not define. At last, however, he happened upon the janitor's closet to top all janitor's closets. It was larger than the bathroom by a long shot, and full of cabinets decorated with hazard tape and requiring a key to access. Those were towards the back, though, probably following the philosophy that a terrorist seeking them would be too lazy to cross the entire room to steal them and simply give up his nefarious plot. A simple floor-to-ceiling metal shelf nearby held recognizable cleaning supplies, and Sam bee-lined toward it.

Sam draped his jacket and wet shirt over a shoulder high cabinet and started searching through the multi-colored bottles decorating the shelf for a simple thing of soap. Cleanser, WD-40, Borax, Raid, Bleach, Ammonia, Windex, drain cleaner and so many others- anything, seemingly, but plain old soap. His skin started to crawl again, adopting an eerie paleness in the glow of the single bare bulb overhead. If he concentrated, he could almost imagine wires crawling beneath his flesh. But of course that was silly, because humans didn't have wires crawling under their skin (_and cars don't stand up_). It was also silly to look at the bottles and imagine them as things other than bottles. Because of course they were only bottles. But this squat green one looked like skids, and this yellow one with a orange label looked like Ratchet, and the blue windex with its white and red label could have been Optimus Prime in a weird game of make believe.

Where was that soap?

He started pulling bottles from the shelves and letting them fall to the floor. Pinesol. Mr. Clean.

Thunk, roll.

"Kitten-calendar-kitten-calendar-" he muttered under his breath, repressing a hysterical giggle.

Jazz. Ironhide. Arcee. RaTchet. Fall from the shelf, fall from grace. Thunk, rattle, roll.

"Kitten-calendar-kitten-calendar-kitten-calendar-"

Optimus. Bumblebee. Bee, Bee, Bee, Bee. All fall down dead.

"Kitten-calendar-kitten-calendar-kitten-ca-"

His phone started ringing, and the moment shattered. Sam froze, standing on tip-toe to clutch another bottle. Two entire shelves had been emptied; the technicolor evidence lay scattered around his feet.

Sam was almost certain he had turned off his phone, which meant that it should have been impossible for anyone to call him. But if living for nearly two years with a robotic alien had taught him anything, it was that the word 'impossible' usually didn't apply to Cybertronians, especially when the subject at hand involved technology. If they could hack the US military computer system with only a few hours of effort, bypassing the 'off' status of a simple phone would be a cake walk.

Like waking up from a particularly twisted nightmare, the world suddenly snapped into focus around him, bringing with it a sense of bewildered embarrassment (when had he taken his shirt off?) and a shiver of fearful awe, like the kind that comes from stepping out of the path of a runaway bus just in time. Pressing his back to the cabinet, Sam slid slowly to the floor, rolling bottles of cleaning supplies out of his way as he went. Then he reached up and grabbed his jacket, dragging it over the side and letting it pool in his lap.

"_'Shake ya groove thang, shake ya groove thang, yeah yeah!-_'"

The vibrating blackberry found its way into his hand. The little device registered an incoming text message. Where there should have been the number of the caller printed on the screen was an incomprehensible string of staticky blocks and glitchy computer symbols. After about thirty repetitions of the song, Sam finally managed to gather the courage to accept the message.

BuzzingBee: where r u?

Unable to do more than simply sit there breathing, Sam didn't try to send a response, either to come clean or lie his ass off. Thirty seconds passed, then a minute, and the phone buzzed again. _Accept message._

BuzzingBee: where r u?

BuzzingBee: where r u?

BuzzingBee: where r u?

BuzzingBee: come back :(

Hot, writhing guilt rose in his chest and tightened his throat. Fearing even more repetitions of the heart breaking plea, he swiftly reeled off a response.

SamuelW.: hiding

There. Short and sweet, revealing nothing while reassuring his best friend that he wasn't passed out somewhere from a 'post-trauma relapse'. Though he couldn't help but grimace at his lack-luster user name. He supposed that was the price he had to pay for a free blackberry.

BuzzingBee: why?

Sam swallowed, blinking back tears.

SamuelW.: need time to think.

For a long while the LED screen glowed up at him quietly, blank but for a garish American flag in the background. Just when he thought Bee might have accepted that for an answer and granted him the requested time, the phone vibrated in his hand and the glitchy symbols returned. He would never admit how glad he was that his friend had not left him alone.

BuzzingBee: think out loud.

SamuelW.: ?

BuzzingBee: talk to me

SamuelW.: i dont know what to talk about

BuzzingBee: why did u run off?

SamuelW.: dont want to talk about it.

SamuelW.: wait, how do u know about that?

BuzzingBee: mikaela came to find us when she couldnt find u. she told us what happened.

SamuelW.: so then u know why i ran off

There was another very long pause. Then:

BuzzingBee: if u want to find another car, ill understand. NEST gives us some $$ to use, i could buy u a new one

SamuelW.: what? no, B. i don't want another car. i like having u

BuzzingBee: u r not worried i might be a threat to u?

SamuelW: no, i never thought that. im just mixed up right now, b. real mixed up.

BuzzingBee: thats not what galloway says

This time it was Sam who paused to collect him thoughts- or rather, paused to unclench his fists so that he could type out a response.

SamuelW: hes a jerk. what has he been telling you?

BuzzingBee: he suggested to u that we r dangerous, and u hit him. maybe ur mixed up mind is afraid hes right.

Every fiber of his being rebelled again of the very idea, but previous experience with having to accept the unacceptable tempered the reflexive flare of white-hot denial. Emotion asserted that Galloway was a pompous know-it-all who had his head so far up his rear that he could not comprehend the idea of two beings of unequal strength sharing a balanced friendship. His heart felt no fear around bumblebee. Reason, however, quietly inserted that a healthy respect of his friend's demigod power would not come amiss. It whispered that an alien friend's goals might be very different from a human friend's goals, and that in bonding himself to an alien he was entering into a hitherto unexplored twilight zone where a sign of goodwill might involve saving him from a slow death of old age by tearing his still-beating heart from his chest.

Long buried and ignored instinct told him that a lion was still a lion even if it laid down for a while with the lamb.

BuzzingBee: u have nightmares every night.

Blinking at the apparent non sequitor, it took Sam a moment to frame a reply.

SamuelW: how do u know that?

BuzzingBee: im ur guardian, sam. i never let u out of my sensor range. ur heartbeat is always much higher than it should b when u r sleeping. elevated heart rate suggests fear. fear is caused by nightmares.

SamuelW: aaand thats not creepy at all

BuzzingBee: what do you dream about?

Sam would have thought the answer was obvious, given how much time they had spent together.

SamuelW: u.

Another stretch of time, waiting.

BuzzingBee: u r my ally. my brother in arms. my friend. i will do anything i need to do to prove myself to u.

SamuelW: ?

BuzzingBee: do u want me to leave and never come back? i can do that.

BuzzingBee: do u want to disappear to another country, start a new life? i can take u there.

BuzzingBee: do u want me to bring u a rock from pluto? i can get it for u

BuzzingBee: do u want me to kill starscream? megatron? soundwave? i will destroy them for u

BuzzingBee: i will do anything not to be the demon in ur nightmares, sam.

No amount of will power could hold back the traitorous drops of moisture that streamed silently down the sides of Sam's nose. It was such a wussy thing to do, but somehow he couldn't bring himself to care. Restrained sobs tore at his chest as he curled himself around the blackberry clenched between his hands, holding onto it like a lifeline. Wonderful, brave, loyal Bee. He didn't deserve to have the alien angel as a friend, not when he had already failed the most crucial test. The one time he had been called upon to protect the ageless robot he had failed—and Bumblebee had become the living sacrifice in his place.

(_Tumbling, falling through the air, nothing to hold onto, then suddenly Bee is there, Bee the guardian angel catching him as he falls from the bridge—the armored agents stab him with their harpoons, pulling him down with so many trailing cables, spraying him with ice—Sam's own voice, tearing from his throat, 'he's not fighting back!'—an alien voice crying, pleading, wailing, a metal hand reaching toward him- save me- and then the screaming stops and all is still, still as death as they swarm around him and carry him off—)_

Sam drew in a deep, shuddering breath and typed out a response.

SamuelW: u got it backwards, B. im not scared of u, im scared for u. u think i like listening to u scream every nite?

BuzzingBee: not ur fault.

Somehow, Bee knew about the guilt Sam carried from watching a horde of Sector Seven agents—Simmons at their head—capture the yellow Scout. He always seemed to know, even when he played dumb and pretended that he didn't.

SamuelW: i couldnt save u. i tried. i tried so hard. im sorry.

SamuelW: guess im a lousey sidekick, huh?

BuzzingBee: but u did save me, sam

SamuelW: unless im missing something, they still packed u on ice and carted u away

BuzzingBee: there r other ways to save someone. i have seen and done many terrible things, sam. i have endured torture far worse than anything s7 could have ever dreamed up. when i came to earth, i was dead inside.

Sam had heard about moments like these, moments when you looked up for the first time and realized there were stars. Reading the lines of text shining up at him, Sam knew, _knew_, that he was standing on the edge of something so very powerful it could not be explained.

BuzzingBee: do u know the most beautiful thing i have ever seen, sam?

SamuelW: i dont know. a supernova or something?

Instead of a text reply, his phone chirruped to indicate that Bee was sending him a picture. With only a moment of hesitation, he opened it.

An image of himself, as seen from an extremely high angle, flooded the tiny screen. Darkness enshrouded most of the scene, save for a faint light touching one side of his face. With an abrupt jolt he recognized where the picture had been taken- the grassy hill he and Mikaela had climbed approaching the transformed Bumblebee for the first time. His own eyes gazed back of him from the screen, full of wonder and awe, so bright and-to his slight embarrassment- innocent.

BuzzingBee: i have known nothing but war all my life. i did not think goodness and mercy existed anywhere in the universe as something other than abstract concepts. u didnt teach me how to fight, but u reminded me what we r all fighting for.

Shrieking, tearing, burning metal. Guns, swords, cannons, fangs. Lies. Hate. Darkness. Death.

Gentle hands lifting him. A reclined seat on a sleepless night. Endless patience to endless questions. Maimed, rising up, fighting back. _'I wish to stay with the boy,' 'I'll take you all on!', 'You are the person I care most about'._

Sam curled even tighter around the shining tether to the alien far below him, laughing and crying all at the same time.

SamuelW: Bee?

BuzzingBee: ?

SamuelW: when we get back, i owe u the wash and wax of a lifetime.

BuzzingBee: XD


	4. Unwelcome Surprise

It took almost an hour for Sam to find a reason to peel himself up off the floor. He would never have left—would have remained sitting shirtless in the janitor's closet, curled up over his lap with his cheek pressed to his blackberry, simply breathing and trying to deal with the impossible fluttery feeling of being cared about (loved)—if not for the cold. Goosebumps broke out over his skin, and soon enough shivers drove him uncurl and reach for his shirt…only to discover that it was soaked and frigid. Great.

So gathering together his scattered wits, he finally forced himself to leave the dark, lemon-scented sanctuary and trotted back to his quarters for a dry shirt. Then, remembering that he was supposed to go find out why some douche bag government agents wanted to ruin his life, he hiked to level three and followed the lines of armed guards to room 52.

The spine-tingling thrill conjured by the presence of beefy guys with big guns—and the fact that he was going to be a part of whatever they were acting as security for—soon sagged into disappointment as he handed over his phone (demanded by a man who could only have been an ex-pro wrestler) and entered the debriefing room.

Forget high-tech equipment, plush armchairs, and lots of chrome; he might as well have stepped from an aircraft carrier plowing through the waters of the Red Sea right into a PTA office.

Grimy green carpet (he didn't even want to think about what those stains were), bland beige walls, and chairs with threadbare upholstery that looked about as comfortable as beds of nails.

There were more guards here, as well, standing sentry beside a closed door in the far wall, but they looked distinctly out of place in the Wall-mart break room. Half of the scratchy torture chairs were already filled; Lennox, Epps and several other burly military types that could have only been his team clustered together on the opposite side of the table, surveying his entrance with the air of a mafia gang holding court. Sam smiled uneasily and lifted a hand in greeting, relieved when the gesture was returned with a "Hey, kid" and a nod of acknowledgement.

The only other occupant of the table didn't seem aware of his entrance; Leo- hunched over something in his lap, shoulders trembling slightly—didn't raise his shaggy head at the sound of the door opening. For an awkward moment Sam thought he was crying, but then a muffled howl reached his ears and he realized his ex-roomate was shaking not with sorrow but with laughter.

"Sam!" Leo jerked his chin in a signal to come closer, "Come look at this little piece of awesomeness!" And the Latino tilted his hands over the side of his leg to reveal a cell phone. With a panicked glance at the guards, Sam slid into the chair beside him and pushed the piece of contraband farther out of sight beneath the table.

"What are you doing? They have _guns_!" he hissed. His warning went ignored as the exuberant teenager shrugged him off and turned the tiny device so that he could see the glowing screen.

"I happened to have this baby on at just the right time and caught aaallll the action! Watch."

A new window opened on the screen showing a paused video clip. Leo pressed a button, and the miniature actors sprang to life on their 2-D stage; an inch-long Sam, face contorted with comical amounts of rage, leapt at an unsuspecting Galloway figurine and bashed him over the head with a breakfast tray. Leo pressed another button, and the food sucked itself back onto the tray, miniature Sam pirouetting away from the table back to his starting position.

Clamping his lips together around a peal of unmanly giggles, Leo fingered the recording to life again. Scream, jump, wack. Repeat.

Sam's hand shot out and snapped the phone closed, cutting off the clip.

Leo pouted, but compliantly stuck the device back in his pocket. "Spoil-sport."

Contrary to Sam's first impression, the two guards were not oblivious to their whispered conversation and secretive antics. One had made his way around the table to stand behind them, and the two teenagers, absorbed in their guilty revelry, were blind to his presence until he dropped a heavy hand on Leo's shoulder, causing the teen to jump as though electrocuted and let out a squeal. Sam spun around as his ex-roomate jerked upright, moaning for the other boy's idiocy as the guard simply held out a hand.

"Phone."

Grumbling under his breath, flushed a deep scarlet, Leo reluctantly dug out the offending device and passed it over. Without a word the guard slipped it into a pocket of his vest and strode away.

Leo dropped his head onto the back of his chair and let out a quiet wail of despair.

"Awww man, this sucks! Thanks a lot Sam, you just lost me the winning vid on America's Funniest Home Videos," he paused, crossing his arms, "And no matter what anyone might say, I did _not _just scream like a girl. I was just surprised."

"Of course not."

"Not only did I not scream like a girl, I didn't scream at all."

"Definitely."

"Actually, I wasn't even startled. I just had to pretend like I was to keep _los jefes _happy."

"Had to keep them happy. Got it."

"And if you ever tell anyone otherwise, I know what room you sleep in. _Intimately_."

"Would you put a lid on it, kid?" Lennox snapped, his eyes gleaming the way they did when he threatened Agent Simmons with a gun.

Leo gulped, visibly backpedaling. "You got it, bro. No problem. Shutting up now."

But Sam wasn't listening anymore. The other boy had said 'sleep'- present tense, as though when they finally docked in India and flew back to the US everything would go back to the way it had been, including Sam sharing a room with a techno geek who talked too much and had hair resembling a chia pet.

Once more his universe had flipped upside down, and even someone who had survived the battle in Egypt with him, seen the very terrors that stalked his nightmares, had been left behind, left right-side-up. Because this time, everything wasn't going to go back to normal. He had never bragged of being the brightest student in his class, true, but he had always taken a certain pride from being more quick-witted and clever than all the jocks and stoners and math geeks (_and Megatron_). And after scraping his way through the remainder of high school with better than average grades he had managed to achieve the previously unthinkable- he had been accepted to an Ivy League school. That didn't matter now, though. None of it mattered. Though he didn't yet know the specifics, the fact that Galloway had not been surprised by Mikaela's announcement was tacit proof that the government was conspiring to keep him from going back to college. The second best thing he had ever done in his life, and they were taking it away from him. Just like that.

Leaning forward with his elbows braced against the table, he laced his fingers behind his neck and pressed his forehead into the synthetic wood grain (_not real, nothing feels real_). He stayed that way, tracing the pixilated patterns beneath his nose to find where they repeated, until the door opened again and his parents shuffled through.

"Sam! Oh, we were so _worried_ after we saw what happened at breakfast, weren't we, Ron?" His mother gushed, rushing towards him. Sam straightened at the sound of his name and hitched a smile on his face, docilely submitting to being crushed in a head-hug.

"Yeah, sure we were," his father clapped him on the shoulder, hard, "Did you break the bastard's nose?"

"Ron! You shouldn't be encouraging this aggressive behavior!" She mimed a cutting motion over Sam's head as though he could not see her, sinking into the chair beside him.

"Judy, he isn't Mojo."

"Maybe not, but the concept still applies."

"Am I in trouble?" Sam interrupted, tapping out a pattern on his knee to distract himself from the crushing ache of remorse engendered by their obvious concern. They didn't know yet that their baby boy would not be getting a college degree. Maybe not ever. "Cause I'm sure there's something in the rule book about self defense extending to harassment cases."

"He was harassing you?" His mother gasped at the same time his father growled, "What kind of harassment?"

Sam abandoned his tapping in favor of frantically waving his hands.

"Not _that_ kind! It was just, you know, just playground bully stuff. Teasing. That's all."

At the tail end of his speech the door opened again and Mikaela entered, stalking towards him with a scowl turning down her plum-colored lips. Sam groaned, knowing she had heard at least part of their conversation

"It wasn't just teasing, Sam," she sighed in exasperation, "Trent used to 'tease' you, but I never saw you attack him like that-"

"Not that you know of," he interjected with a cocky grin, trying to head off the coming lecture.

"-and you're not such a coward that you would run off and hide for hours at the drop of a hat."

She slid in between Sam and Leo, gracing the other boy with a winning smile and batting her lashes.

"Um, I believe this is my seat," she told him silkily. He gulped, mouth sagging open in shameless adoration beneath the full power of her eyes, but he nonetheless held his ground.

"No way, _chica_. I was here first. But you're welcome to share with me." He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. Mikaela bent towards him from the waist, clasping her hands between her knees.

"Let me rephrase that. I'm wearing steel-toed boots and I know how to use them. Now move!"

Leo squirted from his chair and retreated to the other end of the table. "Moving!"

Swallowed by a sudden storm of laughter from Lennox and his team, Mikaela seated herself in the vacated chair and leaned against him, wrapping one arm around his back. His arm came up reflexively and curled around her shoulders. She smelled like home.

"You were gone a really long time, Sam. What happened?"

"I was in my room. Reading."

"Liar." She punched him in the arm with her other hand. It wasn't a girly punch- his face muscles strained to keep from wincing. "I checked your room. You weren't there."

Glancing around at the many pairs of eyes watching the exchange with interest, he ducked his head to breathe against her cheek, "Not here, okay? Please, Mikaela. I just-" he took a deep breath, "-I just freaked out, alright? I don't know if I can talk about it." Realizing he sounded a little morbid and more than a little depressed, he consciously lightened his voice (_keep smiling through the pain_). "Way too embarrassing. Makes me seem un-manly."

As always, Mikaela saw right through his paper mask. A slim, warm hand reached out to grasp his, one finger trailing along the web of his thumb in a strangely erotic manner. Then, with a gentle squeeze that conveyed support and understanding more clearly than any words, it let go.

"Okay."

The door in the opposite wall chose that moment to swing open, and a wide assortment of decorated officers, suited bureaucrats, and pencil-pushers dressed in gray and carrying clipboards entered. A man with a block of flashing metals sheathing one side of his chest took the helm. His stainless steel eyes surveyed them with vague detachment, his arms clasping behind his back.

"Good morning. I am General Thatcher. Thank you for joining us."

"Like we had a choice," Leo muttered under his breath.

"Today is going to be a little unorthodox because so many of you are civilians. Just cooperate and answer any questions you are asked to the best of your abilities and we can all get on with our lives."

"Wait, where are Simmons and Galloway?" Mikaela muttered suddenly, looking around. Sam blinked, only just realizing that their group was not complete.

"You may have noticed that two of your number are missing," Thatcher continued, though his gaze never once lingered on Mikaela, "Simmons and Galloway, as agents past and present of the US government, are being interviewed separately for the individual portion of the debriefing. They will rejoin us once all of your solo statements have been taken, at which point the Autobots will also join us for a video conference."

This announcement sparked murmurs of fear and anticipation from the small crowd. Some of the tension eased from Sam's muscles at the promise of being able to see his friends again so soon. The fact that Thatcher had not excluded Optimus meant that the giant robot must have been in good enough shape to participate. But it was the thought of seeing Bumblebee, even surrounded by so many others, that made his stomach do back flips. Had it really only been five hours since he had felt metal so warm, so alive, pressing with infinite gentleness against his legs?

Thatcher clapped his hands together, motioning to the suits accompanying him.

"That said, let's get started, shall we?"

One of the faceless gray bureaucrats stepped forward and began to speak, never taking his eyes from his clipboard.

"We will call you one at a time to give individual statements. You are not to discuss with anyone else what transpires during your interview until after every name has been called. Understood?" A few nods, but he continued without waiting for their acknowledgement. "First up-Captain

Lennox."

Boredom was a concept not unknown to any teenager, especially Sam. But in the hours that followed, hours spent cooped up in the rapidly shrinking room as one by one the people around him disappeared into the inner chamber, the word 'boredom' took on a whole new meaning. It was no longer only a state of being- it was a special place in Hell reserved for twitchy, slightly psychotic 18-year-olds convinced, with every passing moment spent in idleness, that a group of Decepticons was amassing just outside the walls. First it was merely Starscream circling the ship, demon red eyes peering through layers of steel to watch his heart beat, waiting for the perfect moment to spear it with a laser the width of a hair. Then it was Starscream and Megatron, Megatron slowly but surely tearing the ship to bits without alerting anyone to his presence, tearing his way towards Optimus and Bee and all the others waiting unawares below deck. The next minute Soundwave joined the group, cutting off their communications so that they could not cry for help when the assault began. Soon, every slashing, raging, tearing metal monster wearing a purple badge he could dream up waited on deck to kill them all.

When his own turn came, it took several repetitions of his name to tear him from his waking nightmare. His hands had unknowingly become clenched together; he peeled them apart, shocked by the bruised crescents on the back of his left hand. He didn't remember feeling any pain.

They lead him back through a short corridor to an office almost identical to the one the shrink had inhabited. Nausea inducing colors, little decoration, plastic furniture. Having watched more cop and lawyer dramas than was probably wise, he expected them to use a good-cop/ bad-cop routine to try to catch him out in a lie. Instead, they told him to start from when he first met the Autobots and work his way up from there to the moment before he stepped into the office. For the most part he spoke uninterrupted (editing out Bee's attempts at match making and the make-out incident with the freaky, long-tongued robot), at times instructed to give greater detail about this or that event.

It was rather cathartic, in a way, to simply let himself spew about all the things he couldn't spew to anyone back at home. He would never see the pencil-pushers and note-takers ever again, and they weren't oozing false sympathy and looking to find something wrong with him the way shrinks did. They just listened and typed, not giving a shit about the danger he had been in or whether it had left him damaged, un-whole. Not normal.

It was wonderful.

When he finished, they started asking questions he felt were rather redundant (describe those Decepticons you mentioned again, are you sure there were thirteen?) but thankfully not too personal.

At long last the three suits taking notes on their laptops and clipboards capped their pens and saved their documents, and the men-in-black wannabe prodding him through his tale handed him a bottle of water and sent him out. Sam drained the whole thing before he emerged back into the waiting room.

Apparently, he had been the last one to be called. When he returned he found the previously empty table not-so-empty anymore- three hastily erected flat screen monitors stood at one end of the oval table, facing the assembled group that had clumped together at the other end for the best view. Sometime during his absence Simmons and Galloway had slunk into the room and now occupied chairs at the very back of the group. He glared at them both. Galloway scowled back. Simmons merely rolled his eyes theatrically and shook his head.

Sam slid into his seat beside Mikaela just as a techie stationed near the screens began typing away on his lap top, setting up the connection. Trying to hide the damage to his hand, he folded his arms and tucked the marred appendage against his side. Mikaela, seeing the motion for what it was, tugged his arm free and pulled his hand into her lap. As the video-conference screens flooded with light, he felt her touch her lips to the place where he had bruised himself with his own fingernails. The light contact sent a zing of warmth racing down his limbs.

He leaned over to rest his chin on her hair. "I love you," he whispered.

"Since you said it first," she whispered in return, "I guess I love you too."

"Connection made. We're live, General," the techie announced.

Thatcher moved to stand at the apex of the table, centering himself in the black beady eye of the camera mounted on top of the center screen. "Good. Start the camera feed."

The monitors blinked simultaneously, and suddenly three familiar faces stared back at them, scaled down until each filled approximately that same space as a human head. Sam's heart fell- Optimus Prime in the center, Ratchet and Ironhide flanking him. But no Bumblebee.

"Good afternoon," Thatcher greeted, tone crisp and business-like, "Thank you for agreeing to this video conference. It would have been rather difficult to arrange such a meeting in the secondary hanger, I'm sure you understand. As you may know or may not know, I am General Thatcher," he inclined his head slightly, "I believe we have already met, Optimus Prime."

To Sam's ears there seemed to be a subtle thread of meaning woven into the words, but he could not possibly guess what it was.

_"Indeed we have."_

"Ladies and gentlemen-" he gestured grandly to the three screens, "For those of you who have not already become acquainted with the Autobots, I am proud to have the honor of being the first to introduce you. Center stage is Optimus Prime, the leader of the Autobots and diplomatic head of all Cybertronians."

"Tell that to the Decepticons," Lennox muttered darkly, stirring up a smattering of nervous chuckles.

Sans battle mask, Optimus intoned, _"It is an honor to meet you all. It is my sincerest wish that human-cybertronian relations will continue to develop with an air of mutual respect and cooperation in the future."_

Thatcher lifted a hand towards Ratchet.

"To your left, I present you with Ratchet, Chief Medic and Science Officer of the Autobots."

_"I do not have a full range of sensor data at my disposal upon which to base my conclusion, but it seems that you all look quite ill."_

Despite his dismal mood, Sam managed to crack a smile.

"It's the lighting, Ratchet. Don't worry about it."

The medic turned to regard him, motionless metal visage somehow latent with skepticism.

_"My data processing units are more than capable of accounting for and filtering out 'bad lighting'. If I had my way this meeting would not have taken place for some days yet, but I suppose the damage is done now."_

Flushing deeply, Sam ducked his head and rubbed the back of his neck, feeling every gaze in the room swivel to focus on him with sudden scrutiny.

Thatcher cleared his throat and lifted a hand in Ironhide's direction.

"And on your right, last but not least, is Ironhide, the Autobot's chief weapons specialist and battle field strategist."

To Sam's utter shock, Ironhide actually slouched, crossing his arms over his chest and giving a short, upward jerk of his chin.

_"Sup."_

Sam and Mikaela glanced at each other— and simultaneously curled up and choked with laughter. It seemed the weapons specialist had decided that his lack of understanding of the word 'cool' was unacceptable, and had applied himself over the last five hours to studying human slang.

Leo, Ron and Judy, left out of the loop, merely glanced between the metalloid faces filling the screens and the two teenagers writhing in their chairs, clearly confused. The marines simply smiled and waved in return.

"Nothing much, man. Nothing much," Epps answered with a casual shrug, stretching his legs out in front of him. "Been stuck in this room for hours, but that's 'bout it,".

_"Sucks."_

"After you are dismissed," Thatcher addressed the humans, sending a pointed glare at Sam and Mikaela that only caused Sam's giggles to become even more hysterical (why was everything suddenly so _funny_?), "You may, if you wish, meet the other Autobots on board the ship. That is, of course, if they are amenable to the idea." He directed the last statement towards Optimus, who inclined his head.

_"We are."_

Had laughter always felt so wonderful? He hadn't laughed for almost two years, and sometimes—on those dark nights he lay awake in pool of sweat, seeing monsters in the cracks on the ceiling and feeling the icy waters of senseless panic fill his lungs—it seemed as if he had never laughed at all. Now he wondered how he could have possibly forgotten.

Feeling the softness of Mikaela's form press against him as they leaned against each other for support, seeing the comically baffled faces of his parents through a fine sheen of hysterical tears (_alive, still alive, no longer cowering and broken_) he realized that everything was going to be okay. Everyone was there, everyone was healing, and college or not everything would be okay.

Leo leaned over and pinched him, hissing 'Dude!' in his ear, and Sam reluctantly reined himself in, scraping together enough self control to calm his stomach-heaving peals of laughter into nerdy little giggles. Beside him Mikaela slowly straightened as well.

"Now, on to business." Thatcher clasped his hands behind his back again, stiffening his posture into a more serious pose. "As you all know, for a very long time we humans have been disinclined to believe in the possibility of aliens. If it were not for the fact that the existence of other life forms was broadcast worldwide less than a week ago, you would all currently be signing your way through a stack of non-disclosure agreements the size of a phone book. As such, you will _still_ be signing many, many forms before you leave this room, but they will only amount to slightly less than a phone book." The ironic humor in his words elicited a few weak chuckles, but they died at his next words.

"A grave crisis may have been avoided, but the Decepticons are still a dire threat to our national security and to people all over the world. Any little piece of information you have learned may, if spread without check through the community, provide them with the ability to do even greater harm."

_"Now, more than ever, it is of greatest importance that we work together rather than at cross purposes to each other,"_ Optimus spoke up, _"The revelation of our existence may prove to be either a boon or a devastating blow, depending entirely upon how the world community chooses to receive us. The Decepticons will try to turn the tide in their favor by sowing discord, as we cannot fight the greater evil while at the same time fighting amongst ourselves."_

"So basically you need us to lie our asses off about how great you guys are," Ron summed up with a touch of disgust. Optimus turned to regard him. Sam shivered, grateful he wasn't the target of that revealing blue stare.

_"What we need most is for you to say nothing at all,"_ the alien leander rebuked calmly.

"Which is why, when you leave, you will be getting one of these-" Thatcher picked up a bound packet of papers the thickness of the paperback novel and held it up for illustration. "After we go over the immediate plans for the next few days, all civilians will be required to leave the room."

A sunburst of understanding dawned in Sam's mind at the announcement, and he looked from Ratchet to Ironhide with new appreciation for their presence in a meeting that seemed to be more of a lecture than a conference. The soldiers would, of course, need to discuss tactics and battle plans with their robotic allies, and it appeared that the PTA-waiting-conference room would soon be put to use as a war room as well.

"We will dock in two day's time at a naval base on the Indian coast. From there, C-17's will airlift the Autobots and Lennox's team back to NEST headquarters. The rest of you will be put on a plane back to the states as soon as possible. Upon reaching US soil, you will be met by NEST agents who will convey you back to your homes and remain in contact with you for two months' time in case you have any problems or feel the need to report any suspicious activity."

Sam sat up straighter in his chair, feeling the first stirrings of unease begin to prickle in his chest.

"Wait," he objected, "What about Bumblebee? How's he going to get back to California?"

Thatcher turned to look at him heavily, the same inexplicable resignation he had felt in Optimus' voice earlier that day coloring his tone. "He will be accompanying the other Autobots via C-17 back to NEST headquarters."

"Which is where, exactly?" Leo piped up.

"That's classified."

Sam looked from Thatcher to Optimus, uncomprehending. (_It can't be.)_

"So he's going to go with Ratchet and get repaired, right? And then you'll send him back?"

The Autobots regarded him solemnly, a row of looming monoliths, gleaming camera-lens eyes revealing nothing. Thatcher wouldn't meet his eyes, shuffling the papers on the table in front of him. Sam's heart started beating faster, and the air grew too thick to breathe.

"He's only going to be gone for a little while. A week or two and he'll be back! Right?"

"Son..." Thatcher began. Sam sprinted ahead of him, cutting him off with a dire urgency to keep the words waiting on his tongue from materializing in the air. (_Don't say it—it's not real if you don't say it-)_

"S-s-o that's the plan?" his voice skipped and stuttered as he spoke, and he couldn't seem to control it. "They'll fix the dents, make him right as rain, and then send him home to me?"

_"Bumblebee will be accompanying us to NEST, Sam,"_ Optimus affirmed softly, voice impossibly soft.

Sam scarcely heard him. Black began to creep in along the edges of his vision. The floor tilted sideways and rolled away from under his chair.

_"...But he will not be returning to the United States."_

And the world inverted itself.


	5. Wanted

Sam knew what dying felt like.

And despite his recent miraculous revival beneath the Egyptian sun—when his scorched, broken body had jolted back to life by the calling of something other than the electrically charged pads held against his chest—it did not taste like sand.

It tasted like water.

At six years old, he had one day decided to swim out to the island in the middle of the lake where they held their annual family vacation. The bulky orange life vest his parents always made him wear was left back at the cabin—it cut under his arms and made him look stupid. And he didn't want to look stupid swimming out to the lake; he wanted to look all grown up. Like all the other big boys who could swim out to the lake without neon foam coolers whose straps pulled up under his arms.

The water was cold as he waded into it, but that was okay, because he was a grown up and the cold didn't bother him. He felt his way along the sandy bottom, watching the shimmering green mirror lap against his chest, rising steadily upwards. When he could no longer feel the sand between his toes he felt a little scared, but it was no big deal. He was a big boy, and he had learned how to swim the summer before.

But as hard as he doggie paddled forward, limbs waving back and forth beneath the water, the island never seemed to get any closer. The water got cold and colder, and the folding chairs lined up around the edge of the lake got smaller and smaller, but still he couldn't reach the island.

And then he started getting tired.

Wanting to rest for a moment, Sam tried to put his feet down—and his head dipped beneath the surface as his reaching toes met nothing but more water.

Suddenly terrified, he came up for air, thrashing. His muscles ached, screaming with the need for rest, but when he tried to float he only ended up sinking again. Black stars started to burst before his eyes as he tried to keep his head above the water, and he _needed_ a moment to rest, to breathe, _but_ _he couldn't touch the bottom_.

Somewhere in all of that he got a lungful of water and flailed in panic, turning the wrong way around, going down instead of up. Years later he couldn't remember much of the details of what happened after that, save for the feeling of what it felt like to drown. Lungs cramping, straining, hurting with the need to _breathe _when there was no air to be found, surrounded by endless water in all directions, water that went down, down, deeper than a well or an abyss, down into the eternal dark.

Now, there was plenty of air. He was 18 years old and sitting in a chair, not splashing around helplessly in six foot deep water. Yet still he felt as if he had somehow ventured out onto an endless lake and only now realized that there was no bottom. And this time, his father couldn't jump in to save him.

Something part of his memories of drowning must have showed on his face, because Mikaela took one look at him and _bristled_. Features narrowing in tightly leashed anger, she speared Optimus with a glare containing slightly less wattage than a bolt of lightning.

"And what does Bumblebee have to say about this arrangement?" She questioned, tone hard with suspicion.

_"__Bumblebee__ is one of my soldiers and therefore required to obey my orders. For the time being, at least, I believe it would be prudent for us to remain 'underground', as it were, and allow the media storm time to calm."_

Thawing slightly, just enough to grab onto the thread of the conversation (_breathe in slowly, don't let them see you gasp for air_), Sam worked to make his voice sound calm and rational. He succeeded, barely.

"But no one knows he's my car. Everyone looks at him and sees- well, a _car_. Doesn't that count as being underground?"

"The United States government," Thatcher interjected suddenly, "Has also requested that all of the Autobots be present for the drafting of a treaty between our two peoples. Would you prefer that your friend be bound by a contract in which he has no say? Remember, too," he continued as both Sam and Mikaela opened their mouths to speak, "That your perfect disguise has already failed once, to disastrous consequences."

Taken aback, the black hole forming just beneath Sam's heart momentarily quieted. Forcing himself to concentrate, he flipped open his mental rolodex and flicked through his memories, searching for a time when someone might have discovered their secret. He could not think of one incident, especially not one that had resulted in 'disastrous consequences'.

Seeing his look of blank incomprehension, Thatcher glanced over his head and prompted,

"Galloway? The file."

Sam twisted around in his chair as the politician rose and transferred the briefcase laid across his knees to the table. He watched, with growing apprehension, as the latch was thumbed back and the lid propped open, exposing a neatly organized stack of manila folders. Although Thatcher did not elaborate on his obscure order, Galloway seemed to know exactly what file he was looking for and swiftly extracted it from under the others, sliding it down the table to the General.

Without taking his eyes from Sam, Thatcher trapped the sliding folder under one hand and flipped it open.

"At 11:23 am on the second of September, 911 dispatchers in the New Jersey area received no less that 214 calls from students at Princeton university claiming that a 'metal monster' was in the process of destroying the main library."

Using all the delicacy of someone handling endangered poison frogs, Thatcher pulled no less than a dozen six by eight glossy photos from the file and arranged them on the table in front of Sam.

Beside him Mikaela gasped, lifting a hand to cover her mouth. "Oh my God. Oh my God."

Like miniature windows onto the aftermath of a tornado, each of the pictures showed a different view of the main Princeton library after it had been gutted by the rampaging Pretender: rows of fluorescent lights torn from the ceiling and hanging by their wires over dustings of shattered glass; eight foot shelves toppled like so many dominoes, their books spilled out over the floor; balconies and staircases torn into nothing but splinters; wood flooring marred by smoking furrows where blasts from an ion cannon had missed their mark; day light streaming in through a giant whole in one wall, scattered chunks of plaster all that remained from before it was blown into an impromptu doorway. And other things that made him want to turn away and retch- human shaped mounds covered with blue tarps, pools of blood so dark it appeared black.

"Sam, what it the world is all _this_?" his mother blurted. She reached out a hand and started sorting through the pictures. "My God, there's blood _everywhere_!"

Unable to bear the shocked, silent gazes of the people around him, Sam moved to bury his face in his hands, lacking the strength to continue looking at the grisly records. -But then something occurred to him, something that glinted in his mind like a diamond glimpsed deep beneath the surface of the water. His hands sprang away from his forehead, smacking down on the table with sudden inspiration. Feeling that Thatcher was not the authority to whom he needed to make his appeal (_so simple, why hadn't they already thought of it?)_ Sam turned his pleading gaze to Optimus.

"Look, this is bad, okay? I'm not saying it's not, because it is. But you've got this backwards- that thing didn't come after me because of Bumblebee, it came after me because it happened to see me freaking out with all those weird symbols in my head." He twiddled his fingers by his temple for emphasis, striving to make him tone logical rather than begging, "So his cover hasn't been blown after all."

It was Ratchet, rather than Optimus, who refuted his chain of reasoning. _"And why do you think the Pretender happened to be mimicking someone at the very school you attended, Sam?"_

His heart plummeted, though he struggled not to lose that golden glimpse of a way out, refused to let the mirage out of his sight. "I dunno, maybe it was just scouting around, scoping things out!"

But Ratchet only shook his head.

_"As I am the only one of the Autobots with scanners powerful enough to penetrate the disguise of a Pretender, it was my responsibility, once Optimus' body had been secured, to return to the school and seek it out, lest it attempt to return at another time- repaired- and finish what it started,"_ he inclined his head meaningfully towards the array of photos scattered across the table.

_"Given my ability as a medic to access the core processing unit of any other Cybertronian for the purpose of repairs, I was able to...__persuade__...the Pretender to reveal how it had come to your school. Sam, when Bumblebee transformed in your yard to deactivate the protoforms attacking you and your father, someone else was watching in secret."_

Ice cascaded down Sam's insides. "Starscream," he mouthed breathlessly.

_"No. _Soundwave_,"_ Ironhide corrected. The way he stressed the name lent it a certain menace, hinted at an evil darker than even Starscream could contend. _"The same Pit-blasted Decepticon that discovered the location of the Allspark shard and Megatron's corpse."_

Feeling that he was somehow missing a crucial piece of information, Sam glanced at Mikaela and found Mikaela glancing at him in a similar manner. It was Leo, to his surprise, that made the connection.

"Satellites!" He breathed in awe, face lighting up as if his six button mouse had suddenly grown two new buttons, "That robot- that Soundwave- must have hooked up to a satellite and used it to look for any cars that spontaneously morphed into robots. Oh, that is so _wicked_!" He fisted his hands in his hair and bounced a little in place. If the situation were not so serious, and if his hands were not curling into fists beneath the table with the desire to punch his lights out, Sam might have found the geek-out to be rather amusing.

_"Your description may be crude, but it is essentially correct,"_ Ratchet acknowledged.

Sam's father, looking increasing befuddled and outraged by parts, leaned forward and pointed a stubby a finger at Optimus, then Ratchet, then Ironhide, not seeming to know who to target.

"Alright, what is all of this about Pretenders and satellites and whatnot? And what about that thing in the desert? Why did it go and kidnap us and _try to murder our son _just to wreck a pyramid?"

Thatcher road rough-shod over anything the Autobots might have said, replying sternly, "Mr. Witwikity, believe me when I tell you that the less you know, the less someone might try to torture out of you."

Paling to a stark white, his father slowly curled his extended finger back into his fist and lowered his arm, clamping his lips together. Sam caught sight of his other hand reaching for and tightly grasping his mother's under the table. The worm of remorse weighing heavily in his heart began to wriggle again at the sight of his parents- his goofy, overprotective, _normal_ parents- having to deal with a world that did not stop for a glass of wine and frequently did not contain its horrors to the six o'clock news. Two years ago he had longed for something, anything, to come crashing into his life and shake things up a little, give him an adventure to be read about in mass-market paper backs. Now, two years older and a hundred years wiser, he would have cut off his right leg and hand delivered it to Megatron to be able to go back to a time when the most dangerous thing he did on a daily basis was confront Trent and the closest he came to carrying the world on his shoulders was heading a group project on environmental decline ('_Take the cube and run!'- 'I have to get this to Optimus!_'-).

Kids never realized how much they relied on their parents' ability to handle anything life might throw their way, until the day when those selfsame parents could no longer handle it anymore. And suddenly those kids found themselves very alone, and very scared.

(_Who will save me from drowning now?)_

Turning his head to let his eyes stare, unfocused, at the white-bordered collage of death and chaos spread out before him, Sam started to giggle. His hands found the arm rests and tightened around them, fingers digging into worn fabric; his lips twitched, pulling up and sagging again, not seeming to know whether or not to smile.

"You know," he said conversationally, "This is just all so fucked up I can't even describe it. I mean, _woah_."

Finally, he managed to contain the bubbling outbreak of hysteria and his mouth settled itself into a flat, emotionless line. He couldn't process this right now, so he wasn't going to. "At least Bumblebee will be safe with you guys. The Decepticons wouldn't dare attack you all directly, so I don't have to worry about him getting blown up and stuff- and he'd finally be able to transform and stretch his legs without worrying about being caught. Actually, now that I think about it, I'm glad that he's going," he ardently refused to believe he was starting to cry, no matter how much he blinked or how blurry Lennox's face was becoming, "I mean, he's an _Autobot_. He's a thinking, living person who's so strong and brave and selfless that it's _ridiculous_," (_don't stop, don't think, take a deep shuddering breath_), "he deserves so much better than to be living in a dumpy old garage."

Rather than acknowledge the way he had to swallow several times before he could continue, Sam hitched a wavering grin to his face and attempted to change the subject. (_not coming home to me, not coming home to me- Bee come back!)_

"I guess my school- sorry, my _former_ school- is pretty mad at me right now. Heck, I'd be mad at me too if I went and wrecked my library like that- not that I did a lot of the actual wrecking, but still," he looked blandly at Thatcher. "That's why they kicked me out, right? Can't have a student like me trailing several million dollars of collateral damage around after him, can they?"

Vaguely aware that he was trembling like a crack addict coming down off a recent high, he tried to appear as sane and calmly curious as possible- just a regular guy, nothing to see here, folks. Most everyone- save for Mikaela- seemed to be buying the act, no longer casting leery glances at him as though he would slump from his chair in a dead faint at any moment. But apparently Ratchet was more adept at judging human conditions that Sam had given him credit for. After throwing a hard look in the human's direction, he curled his fist around the camera in the cargo hold, blocking off the view, and proceeded to hiss an angry stream of static at Optimus. The Autobot commander ducked out of view for a moment, replying in the same series of whirls and clicks incomprehensible to the human ear. Though by no means fluent in dial tone, Sam was convinced that they were arguing. He hated the creeping suspicion that it was about him.

Thatcher regarded the pair of unoccupied screens for a moment as though debating whether or not to allow them time to finish, then turned to Sam.

"And how, precisely, would you know that you have been 'kicked out'?"

Suddenly, saying 'Because my girlfriend told me so' seemed like a stupid reason. He turned helplessly to Mikaela, who turned with a raised eyebrow to Galloway.

As Thatcher's attention followed their line of sight and zeroed in on the object of their scrutiny, the politician swallowed and tugged at his collar a bit.

"Technically, General, I had nothing to do with this. I merely answered Ms. Banes' questions. How she chose to interpret them is another matter entirely."

Mikaela gave a very un-lady-like snort. "Please. If you're going to lie, at least do it well," she turned to Thatcher, "I overheard him muttering about Sam while he was having a cup of coffee and reading through one of those files. When I asked him what he was talking about, he spilled the beans trying to defend himself before he even realized I hadn't heard the whole thing."

Galloway shrank from the cool stare Thatcher leveled in his direction. "I see..." the General muttered. Then, to everyone's surprise, he graced Sam with a tiny smile.

"Despite of the poor opinions you may have of authority figures, son, we are not, in fact, a raving pack of monsters. You were not 'kicked out' because of the damage done to the library. The United States government requested that the Dean cancel your enrollment as a precaution to protect your safety as well as the safety of other students."

"Because it killed a bunch of people coming after me," he dead-panned.

No hesitation. "Yes."

The two distracted Autobots chose that moment to end their furious, though mostly silent, discussion, and the monitors once again filled with their alien visages.

Mikaela, suddenly furious once more, alternated between glaring at Thatcher and the reemerged Autobots.

"You guys are supposed to be super-advanced robots with IQ's of, like, 3000 or something! How can you go and do something so stupid like take away Bumblebee—the person _protecting_ Sam- when the whole reason Sam can't go to college is that_ giant evil aliens are trying to kill him_!

If Sam hadn't been closely following Thatcher's expression, he would have missed the slight frisson of tension that passed through his frame at her words and the quick, almost unnoticeable glance he darted at Optimus. Alarm bells started ringing in his head- what was going on?

The General hesitated, visibly scraping for words. "Steps are being taken to insure every survivor's safety," he evaded, "There are still a few issues being hammered out in the first draft of the treaty-"

_"An issue which is neither here or now,"_ Optimus cut across him abruptly, _"As my medical officer has kindly informed me, time is growing short, General. Important as it is to tie up these loose ends, we need the chance to discuss our future battle plan with Captain Lennox and his team. If we could continue this another time...?"_

Clearly upset at having been so effortlessly snubbed, Thatcher stiffly collected the grisly photographs and slipped them back into the file.

"Of course, Optimus Prime."

He closed the front flap of the folder- the nausea-inducing stills vanished from view, as if they had never existed.

…..

Day one aboard the air craft carrier, stomachs cramping from voracious post-crisis hunger, Sam and Mikaela had turned the enormous vessel upside down looking for a vending machine. What they had uncovered instead was a fully stocked lounge that not only boasted of two ratty couches and a TV, but a mini kitchen as well, complete with sink, fridge, and microwave. Not quite as satisfying to sugar pangs as a package of M&M's and a Coke, but the presence of abundant sandwich materials had sufficed to turn them back into rational human beings. Every day since then they had returned when the food in the mess hall proved unpalatable, often cuddling together on the sofa afterwards to pop a VHS into the ancient video player perched atop the TV.

Moving slowly down the corridor, feeling as though he were slogging knee-deep through the metal plating, Sam found his feet carrying him towards the familiar hideaway. Finally free from the torture room after a grueling seven hours, tired, hungry, and drained from emotional pinball, he decided to go make himself a sandwich. Not that he wanted a sandwich, but making one was the normal thing to do when hungry, and he much preferred the simple manual labor to running as fast as his feet would carry him to the hanger, throwing his arms around Bumblebee's leg and blubbering all over him.

Mikaela caught up to him in the hallway outside the longue.

"Hey, Sam!" She called. Ignoring the little voice that whispered to him to turn around, crush his girlfriend to his body and kiss her senseless, he continued along his shuffling course without acknowledging the greeting.

"I know you're not deaf, Sam. I already have one man-child in my family- I don't need another."

A hand clamped down on his shoulder- he spun, knocking it away, and ground out, "Look, Mikaela. I really don't want to do this now, so could we jus-"

Whatever he had been about to say forced itself back down his throat as soft, rose petal lips met his with wild passion, a pair of hands knotting in his hair and pulling him down into the kiss. He jolted, momentarily frozen, then slipped his arms around her waste in response. He yanked her firmly against him, clutching desperately at the warm body. He couldn't relax into the moment- he started kissing every part of her he could reach, restlessly moving his lips from her mouth to the tip of her nose, to her eyelids, to her cheek, to the hollow of her throat, suddenly terrified that she would vanish into a puff of air the instant he let go (_water everywhere- can't breathe-)._

"Wow, if I'd known you go all sex-crazy on me every time I act like a man-child I would have started doing it sooner," he mumbled against her skin. Suddenly realizing something, he gently tangled his fingers in her hair and pulled her head to him so he could kiss her ear. "Now when you said 'family', you mean..." he trailed off suggestively, kicking himself when she pulled away in response.

But rather than teasing, her face was hard and serious. Closed off.

"You need to talk to Bumblebee."

Reality- better than a cold shower. No longer in the mood for kissing but not quite secure enough to let go, he gently guided her head back to the curve of his shoulder and felt her relax there, tension sliding from her shoulders.

"I know," he whispered against her hair, wishing his voice didn't sound so broken, so lost.

"What were you doing down here anyway?"

"Going to make myself a sandwich."

Resisting his efforts to hold her head to his chest, Mikaela craned her neck to look up at him.

"A sandwich."

"Uh-huh." Then, "I'm hungry."

Her beautiful face twisted into the picture of sorrow.

"Sam..." She trailed off, and he realized with shame that _she_ looked like she was trying to hold back tears, "You need to spend all the time with him you can before- well, before you never have the chance to again."

"I know!" He realized he was shouting and struggled to lower his voice. "Don't you think I know that?" He gently, lovingly, placed his hands on either side of her face and gazed into her eyes, struggling for words, hardly noticing as a lone drop of crystal moisture rolled slowly down his cheek. "I'm not...I'm not strong enough to do this, 'Kaela. I have to get used to him not being around. I'm not strong enough to say goodbye."

"Samuel James Witwicky," she murmured reverently, wiping away the tear with the tips of her fingers, "You are the strongest being, human or otherwise, I have ever met. So don't you dare try to get out of telling your friend you love him by saying you don't like goodbyes."

"You don't know what it's like!" He cried, crushing her to him again, holding her recklessly close as if invisible hands were trying to snatch her away, "You don't know what it's like to suddenly realize you'll never see someone again, never talk to them again, never sit with them again."

Fiery images consumed his mind's eye, showing him a continuously looping tape of Optimus turning to face the descending horde of Decepticons, dancing the dance of death with all of them at once- so many (too many) against one and still he fought, still he sought to protect _him_, even as one move came too slow, one punch to late, and Megatron had him from behind, Megatron with his arm locked around his neck, driving his blade into his back and out through his chest, and still Optimus struggled, struggled against death, all for him, but it was too late and his optics flickered and died, flickered and died, blue life fading and leaving only gray-

"Yes, I do, Sam," her voice caressed him- a velvet promise, a solemn prayer. She copied his posture, positioning her hands on either side of his head, carding her fingers through the sweaty hair over his temples. "I know what it's like to say goodbye. After all, I had to watch you die," she leaned up and kissed him under the jaw, "And if you know what's good for you, you won't dare do that to me again."

The words filled him with a warm, happy glow, driving the grisly images to the edge of his mind, and he feared he might turn pink. But with her looking at him like that—like he was the only thing that mattered in the world—he couldn't bring himself to care about looking stupid.

Just when he was thinking about kissing her again, a bright flash of light shattered the moment.

"Perfect pose, my man! Awww, you guys are so cute together!" Leo. Standing a few paces behind them, phone held up and at the ready to snap another picture, the Latino grinned. "Two questions: 1) are you guys going to make out, and 2) can I join?"

Seeing the fierce glares leveled in his direction, hot enough to light him on fire, his leer faltered and he amended, "Can you at least wait to start the action until I can go get my camcorder?"

Sam lifted Mikaela's hands and kissed their backs in a gentlemanly fashion. "Hold that thought. I have a geek to beat to a pulp. Be back soon!" And with a wink, he turned to face the intruder.

"Dude!" Leo scurried away from him as he approached, but he still narrowed his eyes in a conspiratorial manner and whispered, "You and me, we're in this together, Sam. We know the ways of _technology_-" he breathed the word with all the reverence of a fanatic, still backing away from him, "-Us techie bros have to stick together around the ladies. If you don't watch it, they will eat you aliiiiiiive."

"Well then, I guess Mikaela can have her fill of you after I trash your phone."

Sam lunged, but Leo anticipated the move and held the infuriating device just out of reach. He wiggled it back in forth in a taunting manner.

"You already trashed one of my phones! Besides, you might want to hold off on me and worry about yourself- you forgot to pick up your blackberry when you dashed out of there like a wimp fleeing from a pack of jocks. Those guys? They are reeeaaalllllly serious about the security thing; they might destroy it if you don't go get it."

Sam froze in the middle of his assault, suddenly winded. His entire conversation with Bumblebee from that morning was still recorded on the blackberry. That someone might decide to read it did not scare him nearly half as much as the thought that if the blackberry were destroyed his last conversation with Bee would be forever lost. He couldn't risk that. He couldn't lose his last link to his best friend.

Abandoning his pursuit of Leo's phone, Sam leapt into a sprint back down the hallway, sandwich completely forgotten. At the last minute he called over his shoulder to Mikaela, assuring her that he would be right back.

Running at full tilt, it only took about ten minutes to make it back to level three. This time, however, they would not let him near the conference room, most likely because Lennox's team was still inside planning on how best to go about handling the surviving Decepticons. A few minutes of shouting at the guards about getting his phone back, however, did eventually result in the return of the requested article. Snatching it from the guard's hand, he turned his back and quickly scrolled through the recorded messages. He let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. The messages were still there. He would still be able to read them in the years to come and feel close to Bumblebee, even if the alien were a world away.

Pocketing the blackberry, he retraced his steps back down to the lounge at a much more leisurely pace. Both Mikaela and Leo were within, albeit occupying different corners of the room. Leo stood with his back to the cabinets in the kitchen area, fiddling with his phone and laughing. Sam suppressed a growl, closing his eyes and counting to ten. When he opened them, he had mellowed out enough to decide that he didn't care what the other boy did. Sticks and stones, and all that.

"Welcome back, Sam!" Leo greeted without looking up. "Your girlfriend punched me in the gut while you were gone, I'll have you know. Something about being a nuisance, but I wasn't really paying attention."

Sam tried to smile at the mental image of his girlfriend beating up that Latino, but couldn't quite remember how to do it. His eyes sought her out on the other side of the room, wondering if she'd be game for a therapeutic make-out session.

But that thought was quickly squelched when he saw her sitting ramrod straight on the couch, so absorbed in the images flashing across the TV screen that she did not hear him enter.

"Kaela?"

Her head whipped around. When she saw him, her face closed down, expression becoming unreadable.

"I think you need to see this, Sam."

He came closer as she returned her attention to the TV. Rather than watching any of her normal favorites, like Judge Judy, she had flipped the channel to CNN. As he approached she lifted the remote and thumbed up the volume.

_"...and authorities are still on the hunt for the illusive Samuel James Witwicky, shown here, reportedly missing for the last five days since disappearing from Princeton University after a deadly attack on the school claimed thirteen lives. So far, no one seems to know who, or indeed what, he may be, or why the creature calling itself 'The Fallen' so desperately wants to find him..."_

All the air left his lungs, and Sam found himself rooted in place, unable to move.

He had, naturally, known that practically everyone in the world had set off on a man hunt for him after the Decepticons held civilization itself for ransom and demanded him as the price. But after being caught up in the battle in Egypt and having seen the power of the Fallen utterly destroyed, some part of his mind had assumed that everything would just go back to the way it was and no one would give a hoot about him anymore. Obviously, he had been wrong.

"Woah, what's going on over here?"

Leo, catching onto the tail end of the news broadcast, wandered over to stand beside him. Seeing Sam's flickering picture thrown up on the screen, he paled, eye widening.

"_Shit_," he whispered emphatically.

_"...just last night, we received word from our on-sight reporter in the middle east that one of the great pyramids of Giza has been torn down, supposedly the work of the giant machines seen three days ago in every major city all around the world. No live footage of the destruction has become available, however, due to a fifty mile wide perimeter around the sight preventing anyone from entering. The Egyptian government has also been refusing to allow any news helicopters access to air space over the sight, and it is rumored that F-22 fighter jets have been stationed all around the no-fly zone to shoot down anyone attempting to enter..."_

"That's not all," Mikaela warned them through trembling lips. She flipped the BBC, a British news station.

_"...no leads on Samuel James Witwicky, as seen in this snap-shot, have yet come to light, but the hunt is still on to track him down as quickly as possible..."_

Next she changed it to a Spanish station. Though Sam could not understand the words the swarthy reporter bleated into his microphone, English captioning made it possible to follow along with what was being said. It was hardly a mystery what they heralded as the top story, though- here, as with the other two, his picture remained a constant feature in a little box in the upper right hand corner.

_"...some speculate that these creatures are not part of a terrorist plot at all, but are rather visitors from another world. Though their reasons for wanting this boy, Samuel James Witwicky, are unknown, many within the population are calling for his immediate apprehension to try to prevent wide spread destruction as threatened in this message-"_

A sandwich. Just a normal sandwich. He wanted a sandwich, needed a sandwich, so he was going to make himself a sandwich. Leaving an enraptured Leo standing hypnotized by the alerts flashing continuously across the screen, Sam turned deliberately away and went to the kitchen area, fumbling open cabinets to dig out sandwich supplies.

*Click*

An Arabic channel, with a voice-over in English.

_"-fear is at an all time high. No one knows what these creatures are and if, or when, they will return. Our egyptian brothers are still refusing to allow anyone a glimpse of the ruins of one of the great pyramids. Some speculate that its destruction is merely a demonstration, an expression of displeasure with how long it is taking to locate Samuel J-"_

A plate first. Then bread, two slices of wheat. Shaking fingers pulled open a drawer, pulled out a knife, dropped it. Picked it up, dropped it again.

Get out another knife, set it on the counter. Open a cabinet- peanut butter, ketchup, mustard. Sandwich, sandwich, sandwich. _('Bumblebeee!')_

*Click*

Chinese this time. Continuous scrolling announcements at the bottom of the screen.

_"-disappeared from Princeton University in the United States. Large contingents of soldiers, local police and volunteers have begun organizing to start combing China for the wanted boy. But so far, no one seems to have any idea where S-"_

Yank open the refrigerator; jelly, onions, lettuce, tomato, cheese, ham, roast beef. Pickles. Keep it normal, keep it sane. Just a sandwich, Sam. Just a normal sandwich. (_no air, no bottom to touch- can't _breathe_-)_

*Click*

A dark African man, skin almost black, standing in front of a peeling background. Something that sounded like Portuguese.

_"-mass outbreaks of sectarian violence among Christians and Muslims in the north, each claiming that the arrival of these otherworldly visitors is a punishment for the other's sins. The only thing anyone can agree on at this point is the need to find Samuel Witwicky before any more atrocities on the scale of the recent happenings in Egypt can occur-"_

Can't remember which end of the knife to use, get out a spoon. Scoop out a large glob of peanut butter, slather it on the bread. Onions next, then jelly, and a few slices of meat. Squirt ketchup in a spoon, try to smear it on the other piece of bread, rip a hole in it. Oh well. Mash it back together again. It's only bread. You can tear it to pieces and always mash it back together again later. Tear and mash, tear and mash. (How do you expect the bread to survive having so many holes?)

*Click*

_"-no word yet on exactly what has occurred to the pyramids in Egypt or where the mysterious Samu-"_

More meat. Cheese, lettuce, tomatoes. Crush the two pieces of bread together and mount the completed work on a plate. Throw knives and spoon into the sink, watch the water circle the drain and wonder if it's supposed to be a metaphor.

*Click*

_"-question on everyone's lips is where is Samuel Wit-"_

*Click*

_"-suggested that now is the time when the needs of the many outweight the needs of the f-"_

*Click*

_"-hunt continues for S-"_

*Click*

_"-..'Deliver to me this boy'...-"_

"Hey...Sam?"

At the sound of Leo's voice, Sam wheeled around and threw the plate and its captive sandwich as hard as he could into the wall. It collided sandwich-first with a dull thud, splattering condiments across the white wallpaper.

Without any means of support, the plate fell to the floor with a sharp crack, though it did not break. For a moment the sandwich hung suspended by its own stickiness on the wall. But as they watched- one gaze empty, one startled, and one flat out terrified- it languidly slid to the floor beside the plate, leaving a trail of technicolor ooze.

Leo gaped for a little bit, then rasped, "That only missed me by about three inches," his eyes slipped to Mikaela, who had risen from the couch in shock at the sudden commotion. "Your boyfriend just tried to kill me!" He squeaked at her.

"Then I guess it's a good thing he missed," she retorted, starting forward, "...Sam?"

"Give me a minute. Please."

All the coiling, sparking energy had rushed out of him the moment he threw the plate, leaving him feeling curiously drained and empty. Empty was good. He didn't feel happy or sad or frustrated or terrified or one of the many un-nameable things he had felt in the past 24 hours. Instead he felt suddenly calm. Rational. Reasonable.

Straightening up, he went to the sink and turned on the water, washing the pickle juice and jelly residue from his hands.

"Okay," he nodded to himself, switching the water back off and drying his hands. "Okay."

He turned and found Leo still gaping at him, phone clutched between his hands. The coil in his chest wound a little tighter at the sight, but he didn't think that he was in danger of it breaking free again.

"What did you want to tell me? You know, before I took a break from reality and had a spaz moment."

Pressing his eyes closed and shaking his head as if to clear it, Leo forced a toothy smile back onto his face and jogged the last few steps to come stand beside him. If Sam had been in a mood to care, it could have stirred a little pity in him seeing the other boy having to try so hard to maintain his carefree playboy mask.

"Just this," he turned on the phone and called up a web page through his WiFi internet access. "I saw how you went nutso over me taking a video of you—seriously, bro, the nutso thing is not cool- so I decided to make it up to you by putting together this little piece of hotness. Check it out!"

With all the pomp and circumstance from early that morning, Leo started the video. It resembled nothing so much as the photoshop efforts of the third grader- the clip started with a cropped picture of Mikaela leaning amorously against a stick figure representation of Galloway with a sign pointed at his head that read 'A-Hole'. The stick figure leaned in to french her, and then the scene changed to the video from breakfast of Sam attacking Galloway, this time with the little scrawled caption beneath it reading, 'Don't you touch my girlfriend, bitch!". The miniature epic summed up with the completed picture of Sam and Mikaela together surrounded by little hearts and topped by the words 'THE END...?'

Okay, so Sam had to cut the guy a break. He was trying.

"Thanks. That's, uh...some spectacular drawing you've got going there."

"Yeah, I know, right? Just wait until this thing becomes the number one hit on YouTube!"

Simultaneously, Sam and Mikaela froze into twin blocks of granite.

"...Youtube?" Sam breathed, hoping against hope his ex-roommate wasn't _that_ hopelessly stupid. "You're going to post this on YouTube?"

Not catching the dangerous undercurrent to his voice, Leo scrolled up to the top of the page and gestured to the familiar logo. "Already done!"

"...You _IDIOT_!"

With a feral strength he hadn't realized he possessed, Sam snatched the phone from Leo and hurriedly removed the incriminating video. He feared that the damage had already been done, however.

"What IS IT with you, dude?" Leo cried, wrestling his phone back, "That was my best post yet!"

And the spring inside of him snapped. Sam pushed the other boy up against the counter, grabbing the collar of his shirt and pulling them nose to nose.

"Were you dead for the last ten minutes, or did you truly miss the fact that everyone, EVERYONE in the world is currently hunting for me?" Calm. Even. Deadly.

Understanding dawned in his eyes. "Oops."

Wild-eyed, snorting with slow, measured breaths through his nose, Sam slammed him up against the counter one more time for good measure and then let go, retreating back a few steps to avoid giving into the temptation to do far worse.

Straightening up and rubbing the small of his back, Leo glanced to Mikaela for support. She folded her arms over her chest, lips thinned to a pencil line.

"Look, how should I have known that-"

The phone rang in Leo's hand. He jumped, fumbling with it as though it had suddenly turned into a live snake. After many tries and endless repetitions of "Miss American Pie" he managed to flip it open and bring it to his ear.

"Joe's pool hall, eight ball speaking. How may I help you?"

The response was so loud he yelped and held the phone at arm's length. In fact, the response was so loud even Sam could hear it clearly.

"YO, CHIA PET! GIVE THE PHONE TO DOUBLE-OH-ZERO OVER THERE ON YA LEFT!"

Sam would have recognized that voice anywhere. Mudflap.

"What?" Leo yelled towards the phone, helplessly befuddled.

"WHAT, YOU DEAF O SOMETHIN'?" Skids. "GIVE. THE. PHONE. TO MISTA SECRET AGENT MAN!'

"W-what, you mean 007? As in James Bond?"

"BOY, YOU REALLY IS STUPID, AIN'T YOU? NOT DOUBLE-OH-SEVEN, DOUBLE-OH-_ZERO_, AS IN STUMBLEBEE'S PET!'

"Sam? You mean Sam?"

"UH, DUH."

Leo slid a glance at Sam.

"He's not here. You got the wrong number! I'm Leo McCool."

"NO, YOUSE LEO _MCSTUPID_! HE'S STANDIN RIGHT NEXT TA YO SORRY ASS! NOW PASS OVER THE FRAGGIN PHONE!"

Leo paled, whirling around as if to discover the Twins hiding under a table or stuffed in the freezer. "How can you see us?"

Sam, looking around at the same time, discovered the answer to the riddle in the form of a camera in one corner of the ceiling. A single red light glowed down at them like a malevolent eye. "Up there," he said, pointing it out.

"DOUBLE-OH-ZERO SHOOTS AND SCORES!"

Leo followed Sam's gaze and almost dropped the phone. The camera slowly rotated to face them, pinning them with its red eye.

"SAY HELLO TO THE CAMERA, BITCHES!"

Faster than he would have thought humanly possible, Leo all but chucked the phone at Sam. Fearing a continuation of the boisterous shouting, he held it a little away from his ear until a tiny, whispering voice crooned, "Let's talk all secret like, Sam-mah-man."

Shrugging at Mikaela when she mimed asking what was going on, he touched the speaker to his ear.

"Mudflap? Skids? What's going on?"

"Shh. Not there. We got a big old surprise for you, but ya can't go talking about it with the hotty and chia pet hangin around."

Sam felt his ire rising again and forcefully beat it down. "Her name is Mikaela, not hotty."

"Woah, _cheeel_ double-oh-zero, no need to pop a cap on us. Micky it is for miss hotty."

Resigning himself to the inevitable bestowing of nicknames, Sam pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Guys, if this is some kind of a game, now is really not a good time."

"This ain't a game, man. This is serious business! We got somethin we gotta show ya, but you have to ditch Micky and Leo McStupid first."

Sam hesitated, first and foremost because he didn't trust the twins to be 'serious' any more than he trusted that Megatron was really just a misguided do-gooder. And not that he particularly relished Leo's company, but he enjoyed any time spent with Mikaela. And he really, REALLY did not want to venture to the hanger where he was sure to run into Bumblebee.

Sensing his hesitation, they replied, "Ya don't have to go far. We're waiting to meet you in the stair well between levels uno and dos. But ya gotta hurry, or you'll miss all the action!"

Sam looked to Mikaela, torn.

The twins sweetened the deal. "Da bosses been hiding stuff from you, double-oh-zero. You really gonna take that lyin down?"

Remembering vividly Thatcher's meaningful pauses and the obvious tension between him and Optimus, Sam realized it wasn't really much of a choice at all.

"What do I need to do?"


	6. Spy Games

Sam knew what war looked like.

He knew what it was like to be deafened by the sound of gunfire, and what the dirt and grit and broken glass felt like beneath his hands as he scrambled for cover. He knew what it was like to run until his lungs were about to burst- and then run faster.

Though he had never gone through basic training or put on a camouflage uniform- though he had never shot at human-shaped targets on a firing range, knowing he would soon be putting holes through things made of flesh rather than paper—the night his yellow Camaro stood up in a junkyard and a towering red and blue truck had spoken his name, he had been drawn into a war he had never known existed.

And now he knew what it looked like to see the world _**explode**_ while standing at the epicenter of the blast.

Though he had heard all the usual stories about war changing people—about how boys became men the moment someone starting shooting at their heads—he had never understood just how true that was. But when he had fled for his life through the ruined streets of mission city, dodging flak clouds of asphalt and the pile-driving legs of metal giants, he _had_ changed. The feeling of ten tons of death trailing after him, thundering ever closer, had convinced him that he wanted to live. He wanted it so badly that he would do _anything_ to survive.

And so he had found himself perched on the edge of a fifty story building, clinging to the stone statue between him and death incarnate with one arm, knowing that the empty air behind his heels was somehow less dangerous than the silver alien stalking slowly towards him.

_(When did standing on the edge of the abyss become so easy?)_

Even after the fighting had ended, Sam still felt different. More _awake_, somehow. Fretting over what kind of cereal to buy at the grocery store suddenly seemed alien, and more than once he had found himself staring at his teacher's hands as they wrote on the chalkboard, hypnotized by the repetitive back and forth motion, by the clenching and unclenching of tendons beneath the skin, and wondered if they would keep writing, keeping droning on like bees, even if the chalkboard were splattered with blood. It frightened him, sometimes, how clearly he could picture the chalk sliding through sticky scarlet, unable to form words. Even more so how he could formulate, in a matter of seconds, five different ways to survive someone coming into the room with a machine gun—all involved killing the shooter, either by breaking the wooden chalkboard pointer in half and staking them through the heart, or by smashing them in the head with one of the metal chairs until their face was nothing but a bloody pulp.

In both cases he knew, with a certainty that caused his hands to shake, that he would not hesitate to tear someone apart.

But regardless of how altered the events of Mission city and Egypt had left him, Sam had only been caught in the middle of an all out fire-fight for a total of perhaps six hours.

The alien shape-shifters known as Cybertronians, on the other hand, had been fighting for _three million years_. Bumblebee was at least 1000 years old, and the alien scout had spent the entire time embroiled in the conflict. The other Autobots were all much older than Bee—some of them might have been fighting each other from before humans had even evolved from apes.

How much had their war forced _them_ to change?

Skidding around a corner, phone pressed to his ear, Sam realized that not all those who had seen war adapted by creating plans to stab people with sharpened sticks.

Some, like the Autobots (and, to some extent, the Decepticons) had learned how to hide.

How to _blend_.

_"Yo! Get yo butt in gear, man! Frozen dog shit could move faster than that!"_

_"Gonna have ta have to bust youse down to double-oh-_negative-one _if you don't make like a faucet and run!"_

"I'm going as fast as I can!" Sam skidded around the next corner, plowing through the red fire door he had been instructed to find without slowing down. "Couldn't you have picked some place closer?"

"_It's all part of the _plan_, man. Ya want to be a secret agent, ya got to play by our rules!"_

Emerging onto the narrow landing of a stairwell, Sam skidded to a stop, panting, and leaned on the narrow rail with his free hand for support.

"Okay, fine. I found the stairs behind the galley. What now?"

"Now you pick your sorry ass up off the floor and get a move on!"

Sam jumped as Mudflap's voice echoed from the metal walls rather than issuing through the speaker. Lowering the phone to his shoulder, he leaned his upper body over the rail and looked down at the endless stairs leading into the bowels of the ship.

"Psst! Double-oh-zero! Up here."

Following skid's broad urban accent, Sam found the Autobots twins one floor above him. The sight of them crammed into the narrow space, stuck almost on top of one another- bumping the walls and themselves with a jumble of elbows, knees, hands and feet- made him sputter, amusement momentarily lifting him from the dark shadows of dread.

"Thanks for the support," Skids, partially crushed beneath Mudflap, sulked at his snicker.

Sam flipped the phone shut with his chin and started up the stairs, taking two or three steps at a time. "I aim to please," he panted.

Stopping just short of the tangled mass of robotic limbs, he stuffed the borrowed phone in his pocket, sending himself a mental note to return it to Leo later (the Latino had been understandably upset when Sam had rushed out with the device).

"How did you guys manage to fit in here anyway?" he asked, eyeing the cramped robots. He didn't really care about the answer, not exactly, but it was something to focus his mind on. _(Bee, don't go…)_

"Ain't you figured it out yet? We got talent fallin' off us like spare parts!" Mudflap struggled forward, trying to disentangle himself from his brother. He ended up kicking Skids in the face in the process.

"Yow! Watch it, ya stumble-footed after-burner!"

A green fist lashed out and caught Mudflap in the side, doing no real damage but connecting with a resounding CLANG that rattled Sam's teeth.

"Youse the one blockin up the whole place with yo aft, slagger! That thing bigger than Screamer's ego!" Mudflap retaliated, twisting his brother's arm behind his back and getting him in a head lock. Even more entangled that before, the noisily struggling pair stumbled into a wall, causing the whole stairwell to rumble.

If they had been human, Sam would have rushed into the fight, prized them apart, and knocked their heads together. But ten feet shorter and several tons lighter than either of them, Sam settled for pin wheeling his arms and shouting, "Will you two knock it off? You're making a racket! Everyone's going to know we're here!"

Still crushed in a head lock, Skids piped up, "Secret agent man got a point."

Mudflap smacked the back of his head but grudging released the entrapped arm from his grip. "Suck up."

"Bitch."

"Toad face."

"Aft-kisser."

Watching the exchange, the first thought that flittered through Sam's mind was that only space-faring alien robots could make an exchange of insults sound like terms of endearment. The second, deeper and darker, was that the twins really did seem to be enjoying mimicking stereotypical black urban teenagers. Unlike the other Autobots, who had all chosen to act like middle-class white American males.

_(Why put on a show for an audience of one?)_

But pure computerized mimicry or not, the verbal sparring match seemed to settle something between them. Restored to the spirit of the mission, the Christmas-colored robots moved with relative swiftness and grace to extricate their respective body parts with a minimum of noise. Their hunched frames still filled the corridor, making it feel like a tin-foil diorama, but no longer did they appear to be contestants in a Twister tournament.

"Alright. Well, I'm here, obviously," Sam spread his arms to emphasize the fact, "So what's this 'surprise' you guys were talking about? What's going on with Optimus and Thatcher?"

The twins glanced at each other _(-all an act, only an act, they can talk to each other instantly with internal communications arrays-),_ and Mudflap leaned towards him, as serious as Sam had ever seen the burnt orange robot.

"Can't tell ya that, Sam-mah-man," he said, voice hushed. "It's somethin' your gonna hafta see for yourself."

Icy spiders of dread appeared beneath Sam's shirt and began scurrying up and down his spine. He held back a shudder.

Skids appeared to notice Sam's unease, because the lime green alien immediately clapped his hands together and announced brightly, "Time to test your skills, double-oh-zero! 'Cause you, me, and him? We got some _spyin'_ to do."

Rather than lighten the mood, Skids' announcement only caused Sam's heart to start knocking loudly against his ribs, his throat drying to a desert-like consistency. This was starting to sound like a Very Bad Idea.

"You mean that meeting they're having now, right?" He asked incredulously. "You want us to eavesdrop on _Ironhide _while he's talking to Lennox's team?"

The weapon's specialist might not have ever carried through on his off-hand threats to blast any and all annoying humans he came across, but Sam still vividly remembered the sight of those cannons pointed in his face. He didn't fancy a repeat of the incident.

"Them?" Skids snorted, "Who'd want to spy on those dried up sticks? Nah, we got somethin much juicer to show you, somethin no one's supposed to know about, 'cept we caught 'em arguing 'bout it."

Mudflap pulled back, straightening up as much as was possible in the confined space.

"See, right 'bout now that meetin should be lettin out- that's the end of the legit part of all this mess. The stuff some o dem gonna talk 'bout all secret-like after? Not so much."

Sam looked between them dubiously. "And you're going to help me spy on your leader."

"No _duh_. For offin Megatron, you really ain't too bright."

Mentally shaking himself like a dog shedding water, Sam ignored the insult (and the tremors of fear brought on by the thought of being caught spying on _Optimus Prime)_ and replied, "Cool. Awesome. Nifty. Let's do it."

….

It was nothing if not fascinating watching the twins attempting to pose as tour guides. Their size limited them to a very circuitous route through the ship, most of the time traveling through stairwells and corridors where the space between the walls was greater to allow the passage of large equipment. Adopting the graceful, fluid stride common to the alien visitors, Mudflap and Skids were able to lope along too fast for Sam to keep up. At such times- and when they lithely leapt between floors without bothering to use the stairs- one or the other of the pair would snatch him up and carry him along. The gentleness of their hands set a strange counterpoint to the brusqueness of their manner; he never felt even the faintest bite of pain.

The observation of their careful handling lead to another, more unnerving observation- both Mudflap and Skids were strangely possessive. Not in the way that Bumblebee was possessive- Bumblebee, who had a habit of appointing himself not only Sam's guardian but his potential-friend screener as well, acted possessive the way a...well, the way a lonely alien would snatch up his friend and hiss at anyone else who tried to come near (_my friend, my ally, my- my-_). The twins, on the other hand, regarded him as a cross between co-conspirator, amusing thing, and pet.

When at last Mudflap, who had assumed the position of unofficial leader, brought them to a halt in the middle of a corridor facing nothing but a blank wall, Sam was thoroughly sick of being passed around. Smoothing his transformer-wrinkled shirt, he threw a glance around them and said, "Now what?"

"Watch and learn, Padawan!" Skids reached up and touched a boring stretch of metal ceiling, moving his fingers as though tracing an invisible pattern. Just about to suggest that maybe he had a few loose screws rattling around in his head somewhere, Sam gaped as the tips of his fingers transformed into flat-edged tools resembling spackle knives- which he then effortlessly inserted around the edges of a nearly invisible metal panel. Jiggling the revealed plating loose from its moorings, he pushed it up into the crawl space above and slid it aside.

"All right! Now we're gettin somewhere!" Mudflap enthused, using his brother as a strangely shaped ladder to vault into the enormous duct.

"_Pit-spawned slagger_! Watch where yo puttin yo feet!"

As the inevitable hand came toward him, Sam submitted docilely to being set into the crook of Skids' arm like a life-sized doll. Tucking the human down against his armor, the neon green transformer leapt after his brother. Once inside the shaft, he nudged the panel back into place with his foot. Utter blackness, like the dark of night inside a cave, descended with moth wings over Sam's eyes, and a rush of gratefulness that he _had_ been picked up flooded him. He would never have been able to follow them unaided in the pitch black.

From somewhere to their left Mudflap hissed, "Come on, rust bucket! We ain't go no more time to fool around!"

And Skids started forward into the darkness. For a moment Sam was gripped with panic, heart leaping into his throat at the thought that the robot carrying him- the _several ton _robot carrying him- was wandering around blind and might, at any moment, fall through the ceiling beneath them.

"If you can't see where you're going, I don't want to know," he whispered to his handler. Out of nowhere, something that felt suspiciously like an enormous finger poked him in the back of the head.

"Say, 'infrared scanning' with me, home boy."

"Oh." He hadn't thought of that. "Okay, now I feel stupid."

Poke, harder this time. "You IS stupid if you can't do somethin this simple. Say 'infrared scanning'!"

Folding his arms over his chest and scowling crossly into the dark, he repeated, "Infrared scanning," and felt like a trained parrot. Ugh.

To his astonishment and humiliation, Skids actually _giggled_. "Ooo, Freaky. Say it again."

Instead, Sam made a rude gesture in the dark, knowing that the robot could see it with his 'infrared scanning'.

"Now _that_ is just plain mean."

"Shut up!" Mudflap whispered furiously. Sam jumped- the other robot could not have been more than five feet away. "Youse _both_ idiots! Gabberin like a bunch of femmes- we gotta be slick o Prime'll drop-kick both our afts an nail 'em to the wall!"

At this point the vent must have constricted- Sam felt Skids hunch over him as he ducked to squeeze himself through. They continued that way, shuffling awkwardly forward in silence, until Sam glimpsed a spot of not-darkness up ahead.

Something made a clicking noise in the dark, then whirled and whined like a dog whistle ascending in pitch- and suddenly a faint blue light illuminated Mudflap's silhouette. Since the robot's back was toward Sam, he could not see what sort of device he held that gave off the light. The reddish robot signaled with a waved hand to his Sam's lumpy transportation, and Skids scuttled forward, stopping short of the spot of not-darkness. Closer now, Sam recognized it as a slotted grate similar to the kind found at base-board level in homes, though this one was the size of a manhole cover.

Silently, moving with more care than seemed possible for a creature of such size, Mudflap set down the device in his arms beside the grate. To Sam, it somewhat resembled those tapering wooden towers given to babies that held stacks of rings of various sizes and colors. Mudflap tapped the device, gave it a sharp twist, and the blue light flared momentarily before settling back into a steady glow.

"Alright, you can unstick yo lips now, Skids."

But it was Sam, struggling slightly to be let down, who spoke first.

"What is that thing?"

"Dis baby here? Only da best sensor nullifier dis side of da Milky Way."

Skids set him on his feet, and Sam cautiously approached the large grate and the device sitting quietly beside it, vaguely fearful that it would suddenly go Ka-BOOM.

When no more information seemed forthcoming, he prompted, "And a sensor nullifier would be...?"

"Means no bot will be able to pick us up on his scanners. 'Less a course he know's we're here and he comes looking for us, in which case we're screwed," Skids answered, crouching down beside him. The three formed a loose semi-circle around the grate. Opening his mouth to ask what they needed a sensor nullifier for, Sam looked down through the grating and answered his own question. Somehow, they had ended up in a vent overlooking a hidden corner of the hanger. Fifty feet beneath them sat Optimus in truck mode, silent and unmoving and somehow ominous.

Sam knew, without being told, that they were waiting for someone else to arrive.

"And you're _sure_ Optimus doesn't know we're here?" he whispered to Mudflap and Skids. "He's not like, you know, snickering at us and waiting until our backs are turned to jump up and cut the floor out from under us with that glowing sword of his?"

Skids waved him off, speaking at a volume that seemed far too close to a shout to Sam's ears. "Not a chance, double-oh-zero. We's slick as black ice- ain't no one knows where we at."

"I hope you're right," Sam muttered to himself under his breath.

"Oo! Dis side give ya the best shot of the action- get over here!" Interjected Mudflap excitedly.

The red robot reached for him. Sam could not help the animal reflex that had him flinching away. But before the orange appendage could pick him up, two hands closed around his rib cage from behind and lifted him up and away. Skids.

The lime robot held him out at arm's length away from Mudflap, planting a foot on the other Autobot's face to push him away as he attempted to lunge across the grating.

"My human! Go find ya own!" And skids made a noise very similar to a defiant raspberry.

Torn between fuming in outrage and slapping a hand over his face in exasperation, Sam glanced back down through the grating to check on Optimus- and saw Thatcher rapidly approaching the disguised alien leader.

"Enough!" He snapped, pointing down at the scene far below when both twins looked at him in confusion. Abandoning their fight as though it had never taken place, Skids and Mudflap straightened up and leapt lithely back to their places, Skids taking the time to set Sam back beside the grate.

Sam took a deep breath to try to regain his equilibrium (with little success), and leaned forward to peer through the slatted bars. On either side of him, the two aliens did the same.

Posture stiff and clearly enraged, Thatcher stalked towards the parked Peterbilt. His polished shoes tapped out a staccato rhythm on the metal planking. Surprisingly enough, he came sans briefcase or clipboard (or a helper bearing the two items), carrying with him only an air of red-hot frustration tinted with a kind of helpless resignation. It was like watching a kid jump into a boxing ring with the heavy weight camp- the kid knew he was going to lose, but the fact only fueled his defiance. The feeling was a familiar one to Sam. _(Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, a metal demon stalking towards him- give me the cube, boy!)_

"You are the most stubborn jackass I have ever met," Thatcher stated with authority to the silent truck.

Sam choked on air; Skids pounded him on the back.

The highly decorated General stopped ten feet from Optimus' front bumper, clasping his hands behind his back. As serene as ever, Optimus did not rise to the taunt.

"Some would consider that a compliment, General."

"But you know damn well it isn't, so I say again: You are one stubborn SOB," He grunted. "I'll have you know you've gotten Washington stirred up like a nest of angry hornets over this. I had to turn off my phone so I wouldn't have to hear a million repetitions of the same old questions."

To Sam's surprise, Optimus rumbled in a way that could have been a laugh.

"I have full confidence in your ability to handle it."

"Yeah, well _I_ don't," Thatcher refuted. He ran a hand through his hair, just as if he were a little bit nervous, "I don't have the authority to do what you're asking- Hell, I don't have the political pull to even get one foot in the door with this!"

"But it must be done, General," Optimus' voice, though soft, held a steely note of determination. Like granite. "And it must be done soon, before we dock in India. The boy's situation cannot remain as it is. You know this."

Sam's heart missed a beat, stuttered, and picked up in double time, thudding so quickly that it hurt. He leaned down until his forehead rested on the grating, hooking his fingers around the slats. (_Breathe, remember to breathe)_

"Which is why I had to ask the slimy bastard for his help, as much as I might wish to throw him over the side. He has the connections and the know-how you need if you're so damned determined to do this thing.

"I am," Optimus affirmed, then hesitated. "Although the fact that he has demonstrated considerable animosity towards us in the past seems to indicate that he would be unwilling to help us now."

"Us? What 'us'? This is _your_ problem, Prime- your quest, your shitstorm."

There was a long pause, then; "You are not as hard-hearted as you would like me to believe."

Thatcher swore vehemently, using vocabulary so colorful that he must have been a sailor earlier in life.

"Look, I'm not saying I agree with you or what you're doing...but in the interests of diplomacy, I know a few marines that are good at keeping their mouths shut if I need to dangle him over the side as persuasion."

"I thank you," Optimus answered the unspoken affirmation of support.

_"What on God's green earth are you up to now, Prime?"_ An angry voice called from somewhere out of sight, swiftly growing in volume to accompany the approaching rat-a-tat of another pair of shoes. Sam recognized the second man by his voice long before he strutted into view- Galloway. Unlike Thatcher, Galloway carried a bulging briefcase in one hand and a wad of files in the other, files which he was currently involved in waving angrily through the air. "General Thatcher, I insist that this- this _parody _of a joke be terminated immediately!"

Posture radiating a distinct coldness, Thatcher turned from Optimus to observe the advancing Galloway, nonplused by his theatrical gesturing.

"I assure you, sir, that this is not a joke."

Galloway motioned violently towards Optimus, not even having the decency to face him- as if he were not there, or as if he were unworthy of being faced.

"Really? Then how about a _psychotic delusion_? He just came back from the dead- how do we know he didn't lose a few circuits in the process?"

For an instant, Sam wished more than anything else that Jetfire was there to teleport him to the floor of the hanger so that he could beat the bastard senseless.

"If you wish," Optimus interrupted, "My medic can provide you with a detailed report on my physical and mental state- though I am sure you would find that the only thing I am lacking is time to rest."

"One robot insisting that another robot isn't crazy," Galloway mocked in an airy tone, throwing up his hands, "Because of course that is an _objective_ way of proving relative sanity."

Thatcher, hands still clenched tightly behind his back, stepped up into Galloway's personal space and glared down at the smaller man.

"How about," he copied the other man's mocking lilt, "You do the right thing for once in your miserable life and either help us or resign so that someone else can?"

"You cannot force me to resign," Galloway responded stiffly. Thatcher graced him with a distinctly predatory smile.

"Of course not. You'll simply be fired when it comes to light that you cannot act without extreme bias towards the very _people_ we are trying so very hard not to piss off."

Galloway stiffened. "The President-"

"The _President_ may just get down on his knees and lick Prime's feet in gratitude! Or hadn't you heard that it's no longer fashionable to try to undermine human-Autobot relations?"

Galloway glanced from Thatcher to Optimus and back again, face more pallid than alabaster.

"Very well," he finally said. Stiff. Faint. "I'll make a few calls. See what I can do."

He jumped when Optimus spoke; "Whatever needs to be done must be done by tomorrow night. I cannot delay telling Sam any longer."

As though struck by a bolt of lightning, Sam jerked backwards from the grate, scrambling away from the sight of Optimus, Thatcher and Galloway fighting over something about _him_. Logic whispered that Optimus did not seem to be plotting to harm him, yet instinctual fear washed over him in wave after wave of terror that they were planning on turning him in, arresting him like some wanted criminal (_'—still hunting for the illusive Samuel James Witwicky-'_) and turning him over to the mercy of the masses- or the mercy of the Decepticons (_'I'll let you be my pet'__-)._

Sinking through water, sinking through air (can't breathe), he flailed away on his hands and knees- an accidently kicked over the sensor nullifier. The machine whirled, clicked, and the blue light went out. Their web of protection vanished. Almost at once, the sound of a lightning fast transformation echoed from below and Optimus cried to the two humans, "Run!"

"Shit! Shit! Shit!" The twins were screaming, scampering away, and Sam was left flailing like a fish. From below there came the powerful electric whine of a cannon charging up, and with an almighty shriek of tearing, burning metal a searing bolt of blue energy ripped through the vent beside him, missing him by scant inches, incinerating the hair on his arm as it passed. The concussive force of the blast lifted him up and slammed him into the side of the vent- he cried out as he felt something in his arm give way with a sickening snap. Then he was falling, slipping through the hole in the vent and plummeting towards the floor fifty feet below.

But before he even had time to feel fear of splattering into a pile of human goo, a familiar yellow hand snatched him out of the air- and slammed him up against the concrete wall, fingers curling around him in a cage of claws. Sam stared in horror at the cruel lines of Bumblebee's battle mask, the mask that turned the friendly Bee into the Hornet (_my ally, my friend, my-),_ as his guardian angel in robotic form pulled back his cannon and began to charge it for a second blast.

Staring down the humming barrel of Bumblebee's ion cannon, terror overcame him, his throat constricting around a breathless gasp—and something inside him began to scream.

(Bee-Bee-_Bumblebee, no!_)

The moment stretched and held- a sliver of time frozen into crystal, trapped in amber. Slowly, so slowly, his identity began to dawn on the yellow robot, and the glow deep in the pit of Bee's cannon faded away. The harsh pressure of Bumblebee's hand around him retreated, becoming a gentle hold rather than a restraining grip.

_"...Sam?"_ The yellow scout whispered, only Bee once more.

"Um..." Sam shuddered out, finding his voice again,"...is this a bad time?"

Before he could blink, the Autobot pulled him into his arms. The motion wasn't a hug, not really. Too many metal lumps and hard angles to make a Bee snuggle-bear. But he found himself cradled by the giant robot, held with infinite gentleness as Bee crouched to the floor and drew him in against his chest, curling his body around the vulnerable, fragile human as if to make himself a living shield.

"Sam..." Bee murmured again, voice rough, broken, trembling.

"Um, Bee?" He grated, his own voice wavering so hard that he doubted anyone but his robot guardian could understand him. "My arm, I think it's broken-"

In another invisible movement, Bumblebee yanked himself away from his charge- still holding him, but not longer wrapped fearfully around him.

"Sam, I..."

"My arm," Sam repeated firmly, content to lie there limply for a moment staring at the smoking ruins of the ceiling, even if a metal plate _was_ digging painfully into the back of his head, "Could you scan it, see if it's broken? I might need to go get a cast put on it," The trembling moved from his voice to his whole body; his teeth chattered, his toes twitched and jerked, "N-not that I like casts, they're kinda dorky, but it hurts like hell..."

There was a slight, almost unnoticeable pause in the sound of Bee's inner workings, and then he replied, "Yes, your arm is broken. Sam, please-"

"Okay," he cut off the broken plea, "It's okay. I just need...could you let me up, please? I need to have a word with Optimus and then I need to get my arm fixed."

By this time, the other occupants of the room had sufficiently recovered from the shock of seeing Bumblebee's swift and brutal response to flock around the scout and his boy. Ratchet and Ironhide must have heard the commotion and come running- he was vaguely aware of them standing behind Bumblebee, furiously engaged in some sort of argument, Ratchet attempting to rush towards him and Ironhide holding him back (for which Sam was immensely grateful). Skids and Mudflap had slunk back in as well, looking as though _they_ expected to be blasted at any moment…though if the angry clip of Ratchet's voice was anything to go by, they just might.

Slowly, unwillingly, Bumblebee helped Sam to his feet. He swayed in place for a moment, steadied by a hesitant hand across his shoulders. He dismissed the trembling he felt in the metal as a phantom echo of his own (_supercomputer don't shake with fright_). Then he glanced blearily at Optimus, who was staring at him with open amazement as he retracted wickedly sharp blade extending from his forearm back beneath an armor plate.

"...Sam." Probably the most un-intelligent thing he had ever heard come out of the wise robot's vocalizer.

"My arm hurts," he stated without prompting, only remembering after the fact to cradle it to his chest as if it _did_ actually hurt. "Bee says it's broken. So I'm going to go get that fixed, and then you're going to tell me what Ratchet and Thatcher and everyone else has been _telling_ you to tell me."

He blinked again, looking around at all the people staring at him, not really seeing any of them save for Bee and Optimus.

"Sam..." Optimus began. Filled to the brim and overflowing, Sam went off on him.

"God damn it, what is it with everyone saying my name and then trailing off! Oh, poor _Sam_, let's all get together and throw him a big pity-party while plotting things behind his _back_! Things that, I don't know, involve his life! No-no, can't tell him, he's just a kid, he needs to let those people who _know what they're doing _handle it!"

He stopped, breathing in spasmodically, making strange little gasping noises in his throat.

"So I'm going to go get a cast for my arm now. And Optimus?"

The robot tilted his head towards him, optics gleaming in a way Sam knew meant he had Optimus' undivided attention.

"When I get back, I hope you trust me enough to tell me what is going on. I saved your life- the least you could do is inform me of all the ways in which mine is being flushed down the toilet."

Brushing off Ratchet's attempts at ministration, he turned and walked away from them, away from Bee, away from Optimus. And kept walking.


	7. Confrontations

As a kid, Sam had always been very excited at the prospect of breaking a bone. Broken bones meant getting out of school to eat ice cream and watch TV all day—not to mention the nifty orange casts he could get signed by his fifty closest friends.

But at 18, having lived through _two_ cataclysmic battles involving aliens from beyond the stars, he realized that having something that required going to the hospital (or the military equivalent thereof) was Not Fun.

The smell was always a problem, for one thing; it burned in his nose and soured his stomach even when he _didn't_ have anything wrong with him. The infirmary aboard the aircraft carrier was no different. Then there were all the tests and the x-rays and needles—oh god, the _needles_, enough to turn him into a pin cushion—and to put a rancid little cherry on top of his misery sundae, he was in too much pain to really enjoy the fact that the doctor coating his arm in plaster was really hot. Not that Mikaela wasn't hotter by about a thousand degrees, but hey, he was a guy, and pretty much all guys had fantasies about making out with a sexy nurse.

At the moment, however, all thoughts of making out with the doctor took a firm backseat to trying not to throw up all over her.

His face must have turned an alarming shade of green, because the doctor suddenly paused in her work and said, "Hey, come on now, stay with me. No passing out allowed."

Sam didn't nod, afraid that the motion would trigger a Technicolor up-chuck. And though there were a myriad clever responses waiting on his tongue—some flirty, some sardonic—in the end he only mumbled, "'kay." His voice sounded small and lost, like a child's.

_('—the search continues for the elusive Samuel James Witwicky—')_

_('The boy's situation cannot remain as it is.')_

Oooh yeah, there was the bacon he'd had for breakfast. Sam swallowed discreetly, forcing down the bile, and tried not to hyperventilate. He focused instead on watching the shimmering highlights slide through the doctor's hair, thinking that the mousy brown locks looked very soft. Like Mikaela's.

The thought of his girlfriend made him grimace again, for an entirely different reason. She hadn't been too happy with him when he'd torn out of the lounge with Leo's cell phone like his pants were on fire. He wondered if she'd be less likely to kick his ass if he told her that Optimus and Thatcher were planning something major to do with him that just might involve throwing him to the wolves or cajoling him into saving the world again…and that he really needed a hug.

"All done!" The doctor announced brightly, moving to wash her hands in the metal sink. Just sit there for a few minutes and let the cast harden up while I go get your x-rays and happy pills."

He almost smiled at her attempt to cheer him up. Almost.

_('I cannot delay telling Sam any longer.')_

The ominous phrase tied his stomach up in knots. What did it _mean_?

As the doctor turned from him and strode towards her office, he pulled his blackberry from his pocket. It had somehow survived being sizzled by the blast from Bee's cannon, which was astonishing given how finicky it could sometimes be even when there were no molten blasts whizzing by. His finger hovered over Mikaela's speed dial—he really needed to call her and tell her what had happened, and ask her if he could have that hug.

But instead, he went to the list of recorded calls and selected Bee's string of gibberish from among the standard earthly numbers. For a moment he hesitated, longing to hear his friend's voice but fearing it would emerge as shattered and fearful as it had been in the cargo bay, back when he had lain in the alien's arms and Bee had keened in a way that tore at his own heart. ('_Sam...please, I-'_)

So instead, he sent out a text message. More impersonal. Distanced.

SamuelW: B, u there?

Surprisingly, the text actually went through—he hadn't thought his phone would register Bee's line of glitch code as a legitimate number.

Feeling strangely relieved at having moved to break the awkward wall between them, he waited. When it seemed that his friend wouldn't respond (almost expected, really), he typed out another message and sent it along after the first.

SamuelW: seriously, b. we need 2 talk.

Again he waited. And waited.

SamuelW: b?

Finally, after an achingly long pause, Bumblebee sent a reply.

BuzzingBee: im here.

Sam sighed shakily, tension sliding from his shoulders. The whole day had started off crappy and gone spiraling downward from there, so he decided it would be worth a shot to try to start the whole thing over again, beginning with their disastrous conversation at the crack of dawn.

SamuelW: whats up?

He _knew_ Bee remembered his lack-luster greeting—the robot had the memory capacity of 6000 super computers. He remembered everything. But apparently, the yellow scout was not in the mood to play along with the whole 'starting things over' game.

BuzzingBee: call ur parents and mikaela.

And a little message popped up saying that BuzzingBee was blocking his calls.

_Ouch._ If that was not the most obvious snub he had ever received, he didn't know what was. He tried not to feel too hurt about that. It didn't help that his bacon had apparently decided to plot a reappearance, forcing him to swallow again to avoid embarrassing himself. Ugh. He really needed those drugs.

Just as he started plotting ways to get around Bee's block (and considering moving to a spot closer to the bathroom), the doctor strode out of her office with a clip board in hand and came to stand before him.

"Congratulations, Sam," she announced brightly, flipping through his chart, "It's a boy."

Sam stared at her, his eyes going perfectly round. It took him a minute to realize she was joking with him, at which point he scowled in irritation. Sure, take advantage of the guy with a broken arm _(broken future)._

"Don't worry. I'm just playing with you," she eased, smiling prettily. Sam put a hand over his heart dramatically. (_Play along, just keep playing along, keep running through the lake of fire and you'll eventually find the edge_)

"How long do I have to live, doctor?"

She pretended to consult the chart once more.

"Well, if you keep eating your veggies and exercising regularly you'll make it to at least 90. But these will probably help in the short run."

And merciful god in heaven, she handed him a small prescription bottle full of happy pills. He immediately popped the top with the thumb of his good hand and swallowed two without water.

"Only take two every six hours," she warned, eyeing him disapprovingly as he finagled the top back on. Sam shrugged, not particularly worried about turning into a junky (he had always avoided taking medicine unless he absolutely had to, anyway) and changed the subject.

"So, no real problems with my arm? Aside from the fact that it's broken."

The doctor handed him a large folder containing his x-rays. "Nope, no problems. You were lucky—it was a very clean break. If something had been jarred out of alignment, I would have had to put you under to reset the bone," her friendly gaze turned quizzical, and almost suspicious. "How did you break your arm, again?"

"I fell," he blurted, then racked his brains for the rest of his story. It had seemed like a work of genius just a few minutes ago. "Down two flights of stairs."

"Two flights of stairs."

Definitely suspicious now. Sam really, _really_ didn't want to deal with a suspicious doctor who wouldn't understand or react well to 'my friend thought I was a Decepticon and tired to turn me into Spam with his cannon'. In only one day (had it really only been less than a full day?) he had frightened Bee, found out he couldn't go back to college, beaten up a politician with a breakfast tray, freaked out in a janitor's closet, sat through many torturous hours in a debriefing, learned his friend wouldn't be coming home with him, viewed the carnage of several dead bodies, realized that he was the most wanted person on the face of the planet, thrown a sandwich into a wall, spied on Optimus scheming about him (heard Optimus called a jackass to his face), been blasted from an air vent, slammed into a wall, and threatened with an ion cannon wielded by his best friend. Now his arm was broken and he had so many people he needed to talk to, lie to, comfort and confront he just wanted to _scream_, pack it all up in a cardboard box and shove it over the side of a cliff. End of story, now Sam gets to go stuff his face with pizza, sleep till noon, and play videogames with Miles in his NORMAL life. (Well, maybe not the pizza part- he still felt like he might need a bucket.)

"Yep. Two flights of stairs," at her disbelieving look, he elaborated, "I tripped. And fell. Down, you know, two flights of stairs. Oh, and I broke my arm."

She didn't look like she didn't believe a word of his story (or maybe that was the drugs beginning to make him a little loopy?), but she obviously decided to just let it go. "Well, try to be more coordinated in the future. The injuries you came out of the desert with are still healing- any more 'falling down two flights of stairs' might undo all the good a few days of rest have done."

"I'll make sure he has a mattress or two to land on," Mikaela spoke up from the doorway.

The sound of his girl friend's voice startled Sam into a whole-body flinch. Not a good thing, in retrospect, as the motion jarred his broken arm and reminded him of how extraordinarily painful broken limbs could be.

"Mikaela!" he squeaked guiltily as she strode casually through the door. He cleared his throat, then practiced his skills at stating the obvious. "You're here."

She came to the side of his bed and hoisted herself up beside him, swinging her dangling feet. He tried not to stare at her tanned legs.

"Ratchet called me in full-blown mother hen mode to come check on you. He would have come himself, except that he wouldn't fit through the door."

Sam darted a glance at the doctor as she moved a respectful distance away to check some equipment. She didn't seem surprised at the mention of the alien passenger, so he relaxed marginally. Accidentally spilling the beans to a civilian would have just been one more thing he really didn't need.

"I'm fine. My arm's just busted- it's not like I'm dead or anything."

The familiar creeping, crawling, itching feeling shivered in his spine and worked its way down to his finger tips, making them tremble with the need to get a message to Bumblebee. He needed, for his own sanity, to bring his friend out of his funk. Hell, HE was the one who had almost been blown to pieces. If anyone had a right to be huffy, it was him. Suddenly stumbling over an idea, he called up an internet browser on the WiFi connection.

Mikaela leaned against him (on his good side, luckily) and rested her chin on his shoulder to see what he was doing.

"Well that's good. Otherwise I'd have to drag you back so I could kill you for putting me through your death, _again_. And then I'd have to drag you back again after I killed you so I could kiss you senseless."

"Sounds like fun," he answered, distracted, as he typed out an e-mail to Bumblebee's address, "The kissing part, I mean. The rest not so much."

Mikaela heaved a theatrical sigh. "Ratchet would have a cow if I did, though. And then Bee would kick my butt."

He sent the first e-mail and started working on another one.

"I certainly hope not. I like your butt. -Hey!" He cried out as she got him in a head lock from the side and gave him a vigorous noogy. Though he blushed to his ears at the second grade antics, the childish contact warmed him from the inside out. "You're messing up my hair!" he whined, grinning so much it hurt. For once, the expression felt real.

"Baby. Your hair's not short enough to mess up." His tormenter released his head and gave him a playful shove.

"But you've got to admit, it's certainly stylish." Sam waggled his eyebrows and passed a hand over his hair. The ploy worked- Mikaela threw back her head and laughed.

Pressing send on the second e-mail, Sam opened a new page and started working on a third. There was no way he was going to let them end on bad terms. So yeah, okay, he could see why Bumblebee would be mad at him. Furious, even. He'd spied on their leader, then gone and almost gotten himself killed. Heck, he'd be mad at himself in Bumblebee's place. But if he had to say goodbye, the last thing he wanted was to leave with his best friend still pissed at him. So he was going to fix this. Somehow.

Craning her neck to look over his shoulder when he returned his attention to the blackberry in his hands, Mikaela asked warily, "Sam, what are you doing?"

"Spamming Bumblebee."

She processed that for a moment, then repeated, "You're spamming Bumblebee. With e-mails."

"Yep. He blocked my texts."

Suddenly tense, she straightened away from him.

"You mean he hasn't come talk to you yet?"

_That_ made him look up from composing his fourth message.

"No. He's been avoiding me. Why?"

"Because Optimus ordered him to come talk to you."

Sam froze, blinking, like a deer in the headlights.

"You've been to see Optimus?"

"Yeah. When you disappeared from the lounge, I figured you'd eventually end up going to see the Autobots." Unexpectedly, she shivered. "It was scary, Sam. I've never seen him so angry. _Never_. Not even when fighting Megatron or the Fallen. It was like being in the middle of a lightning storm- I thought he was going to start shooting at any minute."

"...at _Bee_?"

"No, at Mudflap and Skids."

Sam cringed, ducking his head with a sigh. "So you know, then," he muttered, stealthily sending out another nagging e-mail.

Mikaela grimaced. "Yeah. But don't worry, I don't blame Bee. It was just a misunderstanding. I blame you."

"Me? But I'm the invalid, here! See?" he held up his broken arm, "Have pity on a man in a cast!" But then his train of thought carried him to the next logical conclusion, and his let his cast-swaddled arm drop back to his side, mood sinking like a rock. "I guess my parents know too, then."

Just what he wanted to deal with. He had hoped to ply them with the same story he had used on the doctor, counting on their natural inclination to believe the more innocent version of events to keep him from a painful argument about his choice in friends. Painful, because on some level he knew that, if it came down to it, he would choose his guardian angel over his parents. That wasn't a choice he wanted to have to make.

But Mikaela surprised him. "No, they don't. Not yet. I was supposed to tell them—since, in Optimus' words, they'd probably be more responsive to another human being-but I thought you should be the one to do it."

"Yeah," he answered hollowly, mood roller-coastering up and down, "Thanks."

Planting her hands on the bed, Mikaela leaned up and kissed him on the cheek. It was such a sweet, sisterly, and somehow sexy thing to do. It reminded him that he did have an anchor after all- his girl friend.

"Don't worry," She breathed against his neck, making his heart race, "At least you have something to do to give you time to think up a good excuse."

Spamming Bee with a single-letter e-mail, Sam tilted his face down towards her and touched his lips to the tip of her nose.

"Yeah? Like what?" He murmured, hoping she was thinking about getting into a much-needed make out session.

"Like talking to Optimus."

Damn. Not only was she good at making a freezer start to steam, she was also adept at sudden turn offs. Feeling suddenly sulky, Sam pulled back and hunched over his blackberry, forgoing the typing out of actual messages in favor of sending various letters, numbers, and punctuation marks, all designed to fill up Bee's inbox. The scout couldn't give him the silent treatment forever. Already Sam must have pushed 'send' at least 27 times.

"Yeah, well, he's been keeping me in the dark, so maybe it's time he got a taste of his own medicine- turnabout is fair play, and all that."

Mikaela pulled back and pinned him with a flat look. "So you're going bitch about him not telling you anything, and then go and not _let_ him tell you anything."

Childishly he refused to meet her eyes, pretending to be absorbed by e-mail number 34. She threw up her hands in exasperation and slid off the bed.

"Well, when you decide to grow up and behave like an adult give me a call. I have to go tell Leo what's going on- he's convinced the Twins stuffed you in a meat locker with dead bodies or something."

Sam jerked his head up as she snapped off a little wave and turned to leave, pleading, "Don't tell him what actually happened, ok? I've had enough of people wigging out on me for one day."

She lifted an eyebrow. "Are you counting yourself? Nevermind," she added when he opened his mouth to object, "What's the story we're going to use?"

Deciding that he really didn't want to hang around in the antiseptic-scented infirmary anymore, Sam mirrored her and slid from the bed with considerably less grace than his girl friend.

"You already heard it, remember?"

"'I fell down two flights of stairs'?" A wry snort. "Please. No one would believe you're _that_ clumsy."

"No really," he insisted, sliding a glance to the doctor working half way across the room and knowing she was listening in, "I DID fall down two flights of stairs." And he jerked an indicative thumb at their inconspicuous watcher.

Mikaela only laughed, tossing her hair over her shoulder and sauntering away.

"Whatever you say, Sam. Whatever you say."

Trying not to appear clingy, he waited until she vanished out of sight down the hallway to follow her through the door. To his intense mortification, he could have sworn he heard muffled laugher from behind him as the door swung shut on his heels.

….

When under the influence of drugs, various body parts had a habit of disobeying him. His stomach, for one, would not stop informing him that he needed to remain in close proximity to a bathroom. His arm, too, ignored his mentally shouted commands to Stop Hurting Damnit! And his feet, in direct defiance of his conscious mind, lead him away from the hanger and up towards the flight deck.

Despite all of his vehement rants and embarrassing outbursts, now that the time had come he feared hearing the truth. Not that he objected to truth in general, but in his experience the most outrageous, terrifying, and potentially lethal things that had come from the Autobots' vocalizers turned out to be true. World-endingly true. ('_We must find those glasses', 'He's going to use it to destroy the sun_!') And his world had already ended enough for one day, thank-you-very-much. The part of him fed on adrenaline roared that it was his life and that he _deserved_ to know what was going on, and wanted to watch Optimus squirm for plotting behind his back. But another, slightly larger part of him hoped that if he ignored whatever it was it would go away. Fade out. Become nothing more than a dream _(don't think about the nightmares, thinking about them keeps them with you)._

So he stumped down a few hallways and climbed a few flights of stairs, seeking out the calming brilliance of the stars. Light, but not too much of it. Silent beauty that remained unchanged no matter how the ground beneath his feet heaved. As he walked he continued to pummel Bee's address with e-mails (65). Away from Mikaela's calming influence, his fears and doubts began to ooze from the cracks in his mind again. Maybe he should give his friend the space he obviously wanted- maybe Bee was so angry with him he wanted Sam to stew for a while in his own funk. Grudgingly he had to admit that it would serve him right. The yellow scout was his friend, but he had overstepped his bounds. No matter how strong his own curiosity, he had no right to spy on them. Even if he _had_ uncovered the conspiracy surrounding him, he still felt lower than dirt. Perhaps not enough to choose a different path if he could go back and do everything over again, but enough to ensure that whenever he finally collapsed into bed it would not be to sleep.

At last he twisted the rotating axel to open the ground-level door onto the flight deck (awkward to do with only one arm) and stepped out into the cool evening air. A playful breeze tugged at his clothes and tousled his hair as he pushed the door closed behind him and drew in a deep, cleansing breath. The rows of planes, crouched before him in the near dark like so many giant birds come down to roost, gleamed silver in the moonlight. Save for the hissing churn of waves as the carrier plowed forward through the ocean, all was quiet. Peaceful.

Shivering slightly from the night chill, he tucked his fists beneath his arms and wandered farther out onto the deck. At last he could think and _breathe_ without something or someone reminding him at every turn of how very screwed he was. This place, these things, would continue on with or without him, never knowing or stopping to realize that standing among them was Samuel James Witwicky, the most wanted person in the world. God, sometimes he hated having his name.

Unwrapping his arms to zip up his jacket (which, luckily, fit over newer, slimmer version of the iconic cast now fitted to his arm), he tilted his head back to look at the stars. He could only spot a few of the familiar constellations, and even those were upside down. Thinking back to the time Bumblebee had pointed out Cybertron _(my friend, my guardian angel- come back...),_ he tried to find the pin-prick of light from which alien visitors had descended to earth. But the sky wavered and danced before his eyes in a way that did nothing to assuage his nausea, refusing to hold still for long enough to allow him to search out the oft-observed star.

Whatever. He hugged himself beneath his jacket for warmth, quickly coming to the realization that the light ocean spray wetting his exposed skin was not very pleasant when combined with the chilly air. Though he did not particularly wish to return inside and seek out either Optimus or his parents, neither did he want to get sick and have to add a cold to his swiftly growing list of things amiss in the Sam universe. With one last glance out at the undulating ocean, he turned to go back inside.

-And stopped cold, heart leaping up into his throat, at the sight of Optimus Prime crouched on the second level deck of the observation tower, watching him. Directly beneath the silent monolith of living metal, one floor down, stood the door through which he had passed. Awed shivers trailed their icy fingers up and down his spine; the Autobot leader had been there, watching him, waiting for him, ever since he had first stepped out onto the deck.

Though he _knew_ Optimus would not harm him, he didn't dare take a step forward. Awash in starlight, the robot's body seemed to change, becoming more dangerous, more alien. The patriotic red and blue faded out into the gray of night; every metal plate, every angle, caught the wane light with a knife-edge gleam. The two optics riveted to his wooden form glowed an intense, unwavering blue that pierced through the gloom like the watching eyes of some repentant demon.

As the alien leader slowly, sinuously, unfolded himself from his crouch and dropped without a whisper of sound to the deck below, Sam felt his palms grow slick with sweat. His heart boomed between his ears, each pulse shaking his whole body. Instantly he felt annoyed with himself. This was _Optimus_- the world-saving, ass-kicking, sorta-friend that had given his life to save him from the wrath of Megatron. In defiance of animal instincts that screamed 'predator' he took a few shaky steps forward to meet the approaching Autobot half way.

"Hey, Optimus," he greeted, working for nonchalance and failing spectacularly. He sounded like a young boy going to meet his girl friend's ex-con father for the first time- and when he had done _that_ he hadn't sounded nearly this frightened. Maybe because Mikaela's father wasn't thirty feet tall. And made of metal. And totting giant guns and swords. "Nice weather tonight, huh? Can't usually see this many stars at home- it's pretty sweet. The cold sucks, though. Do Cybertronians even get cold? I mean of course Megadork was, they kept him frozen after all, but does chilly weather bother you guys?"

Optimus let him talk himself into a hole uninterrupted, only moving to stand right beside him and looking down at the smaller human. In the dark, the only thing he could see of the robot was a looming shadow from which gleamed two impossibly bright eyes.

"I had thought, after your outburst earlier, that you would demand to speak with me at the first opportunity," Optimus commented quietly, not even bothering to answer Sam's rambling questions. They both knew that whether or not Cybertronians felt the cold was not the issue on the forefront of his mind.

"Yeah, well, you know how it is," Sam evaded, dreading the way the entire lop-sided conversation seemed to be leading up to the very discussion he now wanted to avoid at all costs, "Pain and happy pills are good at taking the wind out of your sails." Then wondering if Optimus understood the expression, added, "I mean, good at calming you down from a hurricane of fury to something the consistency of fudge. Not a lot of fight left."

"It heartens me considerably to see that you are, indeed, calmer. Or at least not ready to physcially attack me."

Sam had to snort at that, attempting to edge his way around one large foot. The door was only twenty feet away. "Optimus, even majorly pissed off, I'm not suicidal enough to try to attack you. The fight would be over as soon as you stepped on me."

Ever watchful, the alien caught his surreptitious sneaking and moved his foot to properly block his route of escape.

"I should hope you would think better of me than to worry about my 'stepping on you'."

Completely missing the strained note to the robotic voice, Sam continued his edging, trying to think of a way to stall him for long enough to make a break for it.

"Figure of speech."

Sam knew Optimus wasn't fooled by his careful sidestepping of the question. The robot turned to track his movements as he slowly backed his way towards the door, good hand shoved into his pocket in an effort to seem unperturbed.

"Sam," Optimus said softly, "We need to talk."

Heart fluttering like a caged bird inside his chest, he continued to back away, even as the other took a minute step forward to maintain the distance between them. "Talk! Talk is good. What do you want to talk about? There's the weather, but we kinda already covered that. Or we could swap manly stories and laugh till we puke- well, _I'd_ puke, maybe without even needing a story to get me going."

"I know that you are frightened, Sam. But now that you have discovered that I have been conferring with General Thatcher about you, it is time you heard the whole truth. You certainly seemed to want it an hour ago."

Ten feet. He could make it. He could stop this train wreck before it started _(-ignore them and they'll go away-)_. "That was an hour ago," he shot back, "And now I've decided I really don't want to have to listen to you lying to me anymore. So no, I don't want to talk about _this_-" he gestured with a furious hand to the not-so-large space between them, "-whatever _this_ is. Whatever you and Thatcher were planning, you can both stuff it," Five feet. So close. "Stuff it under your hat, stuff it in a sock, just _get rid of it_, because I don't want any part of it. I have a life, and I'm very eager to get back to it." He paused in his tirade to refill his lungs with the sweet night air, turning away from Optimus. "I have to go tell my parents that I'll be in plaster for the next six weeks before the go Mt. Vesuvious on me," he paused awkwardly, finally tearing his eyes away from the metal giant. "So bye."

His hand brushed the door, but he never had the chance to open it.

Optimus effortlessly plucked him up by the back of his jacket and pulled him away from the portal to freedom.

"Hey!"

The alien brought him close to his chest, trapping him between his hands as he curled his body around the human- and began to transform.

Sam had seen Bumblebee transform several times up close, but never _this_ close. Every part of the metal body exploded outwards, splitting apart along millions of invisible seams, shifting, rearranging, sliding, reforming according a pattern too complex to follow. It was like watching a giant robot-shaped Rubick's cube rearrange itself, albeit one with pieces smaller than the nail of his pinky.

Another difference between this transformation and Bumblebee's was the fact that he was not watching it occur from the outside- it was happening around him. Living pieces of metal cascaded over his head, cutting off his vision. He was lifted up, buffeted, curled into a tiny ball and pushed this way and that with the same gentleness that marked all the Autobots' interactions with humans- though jostled and terrified out of his mind, he was not harmed.

In a matter of seconds that seemed to Sam to have spanned several hours, he found himself dropping heavily onto the seat in Optimus' cab. The curve of the steering wheel snapped together and locked into place, clear liquid flowed up from the doors and dashboard to form the windows and windshield, numbers and letters appeared on the instrument panel like oil separating from water.

Breath heaving in his chest at a rate near hyperventilation, Sam looked around wildly, stunned to find himself sitting in the interior of the very ordinary looking truck.

Then, he did something that only seemed very natural to any human used to non-thinking vehicles- he slid across the seat and pulled on the door handle. Not only was the door locked, the handle reacted as though carved from stone, refusing to budge even an inch at his insistent tugging.

"This is BULLSHIT!" he exploded, still jiggling the handle frantically. And though he knew the result would prove to be the same, he slid all the way across the bench seat and tried the other door. Yep, still shut tight. Might as well not have been a door at all. "You cheated!" It really, really, _really_ didn't seem fair.

"We need to talk," Optimus repeated calmly, sounding as though he were sitting beside him rather than forming the truck around him, "Though you may not wish to hear what I have to say, you will simply have to, as humans say, 'suck it up and deal with it'."

"No. No! _No! _NO!** NO!**" Sam cried hysterically, "I'm sick of this! I'm sick of you and how you always come and wreck my life! What part of 'I'm a teenager and don't know how to handle this shit' don't you understand!"

Releasing the handle with a snap, he reared back and smashed one curled fist into the window with all his strength. The material, perfectly solid until the moment his flesh connected, bowed outward to accommodate the blow—a good thing, or else he would have probably broken his hand.

"First you show up and tell me I need to find a pair of dinky old glasses to keep Megatron from taking over the world, and that was okay, because what did I care about the stupid things? But then somehow that morphed into, 'You have to destroy the allspark, Sam' and I ended up getting blown off a fucking BUILDING! Then, just when government stooges stop dropping by every week and my life FINALLY starts getting back to normal, YOU pull me away from college after ONE DAY and tell me that I need to do even MORE world-saving shit, because once just obviously wasn't enough!"

He sucked in gasp after gasp through rattling teeth, trembling as though he might shake to pieces. Directionless anger grew and fed on itself in its chest, breaking loose of his carefully maintained moorings and flaring into a firestorm that consumed all else. Every scrap of frustration, of terror, of righteous indignation, of the sense that none of it was any fair came roaring up inside of him all at once. He needed something, anything, to lash out at and rid himself of fire so hot that it threatened to roast him alive if he didn't break something. But there was nothing breakable within reach. So he settled for taking everything out on Optimus' cab.

The alien leader uttered not a word, gave not even so much as a twitch, as he repeatedly pummeled his one good fist into the window. He tore at the seats with his fingernails, kicked the steering wheel with all his might, rained blows down upon the dash. He growled like a wild, savage thing, screaming, "LET ME OUT! _LET ME OUT! __**LET ME OUT**_!".

But Optimus did not let him out. And little by little the storm raged itself out, calmed, and passed. When the last drop of fury had been expended, he lay down on the seat and curled his knees to his chest, trembling, eyes hot and tight as though he had been crying for hours.

"Okay," he whispered at last, voice rasping. "I think I'm done now."

"Are you sure? I think there are a few places you haven't managed to bruise," Optimus commented wryly, but without heat.

"I'm sure. I think I just had that on my chest of a while," he murmured, feeling even more miserable at the word 'bruise'. "This will probably sound stupid and really inappropriate right now, but I 'm sorry if I hurt you. I just needed to...I don't know. Thrash all that out, or something."

"I know. And that is why I allowed you to continue unhindered. Despite what you may think of how much my soldiers respect me, you are certainly not the first to take out your anger by physically attacking me."

Seeing the extended opening to a less painful subject, Sam pushed himself upright. Regardless of Optimus' words, he could not imagine any of the other Autobots attacking the great leader.

"Really?"

"Yes."

"Oh." He cast around for another topic, trying the handle more calmly this time and beating back his rising ire as he still found it locked tight. Since it was, of course, his body, Optimus felt the attempt and turned the conversation back to a more serious, and feared, topic.

"Sam, you are obviously under a misapprehension which I need to correct. When I say that we need to talk about your future, I am not referring to an attempt to, ah, cajole you into 'saving the world' again."

Despite the assurance, fear twinged in a corner of his mind the way a fly would disturb a spider web. There were other ways to ruin his life.

_(-'Deliver to me this boy!'-)_

"That doesn't make me feel much better, Optimus," He chuckled humorlessly.

Outside the cab, the weather had started to change; wisps of fog began to trail lazily across the windshield, obscuring the stars. He prayed that the gloomy shift was not an omen of some sort, but the way his life seemed to go it probably was.

For a long moment Optimus held his silence, giving Sam the impression that he was taking his time to get his thoughts in order. For beings that could calculate thousands of possible reaction scenarios in the middle of a battle in under a second, that was saying something.

Then at last he said, "You should probably know first that I am thrice indebted to you, Sam."

Whatever Sam might have feared to be the robot's opening words, those certainly were certainly the last he expected.

"Okay, I'm confused. I can see the whole bringing you back to life thing as counting as one, but what about the other two?"

"The second, as you say, comes from your brave actions against Megatron in Mission City."

Feeling inexplicably embarrassed and humbled, he ducked his head and rubbed the back of his neck.

"That doesn't really count, though, because you were planning on sacrificing yourself anyway. I just made it so that you didn't have to."

"And in doing so you destroyed Megatron, something I have never been able to achieve," Optimus refuted quietly, the same hint of steely determination in his voice, "If I had indeed sacrificed myself to destroy the Allspark, Megatron would have surely wreaked unholy vengeance on the rest of my soldiers and on the human race as a whole. Your actions not only spared my life, they prevented the deaths of countless others."

Sam shook his head, suddenly exhausted, and leaned against the window.

"I guess for right now we'll just have to agree to disagree, since I still don't think that counts as saving your life. And what's the third item on this list of yours?"

But Optimus had gone silent again. Sam's heart beat picked up in response.

"I do not think you realize," the alien said slowly, wonderingly, "How very much you mean to Bumblebee."

"Bumblebee?" Sam blinked, thrown for a loop. "What does Bumblebee have to do with this?"

"Everything. For you see, even though we do not have mothers and fathers as does your race- since we do not reproduce- we do have something caller 'Creators', those who help to design and construct the new shells into which a spark from the AllSpark would be transferred. I was one of Bumblebee's creators. In human terms, you could think of me as his adoptive father."

Sam leaned back against the soft leather _(leather-yet-not, alien as the rest of him_) and slowly shook his head from side to side, puzzled and cautiously hopeful that the entire conversation wouldn't lead up to him getting thrown to the wolves. The first thought that occurred to him was rather inane- Bumblebee must have gotten his looks from his mother, because red and blue mixed together _so_ did not make a golden yellow. But then that thought burst into nothingness under the weight of another, more serious one.

"Wait, you let your SON be one of your soldiers?" He blurted in stunned outrage, unable to wrap his mind around the concept. "But you send them out to fight Decepticons! As in, maybe to _die_!"

Only after the fact did he realize what an awful thing that was to say. Way to go, Sam; open mouth, insert foot.

There was no meaningful pause this time, but Optimus' voice was now laden with an abyss of sorrow. "And if I had designed him without any weapons, sheltered him away from the fighting as best I could, he _would_ have been killed. Bumblebee came online during a time when our entire planet was near destruction, no part untouched by war. Though I longed for him not to have to see and experience the horrors to which I had been an intimate witness, I knew that the best way for him to have a chance to ever know a life beyond war was to have the ability to survive it."

"So you- _designed_- him to be a scout?" Sam couldn't hide the appalled timbre coloring his tone. He didn't care if it was a culturally insensitive statement to make. This was Bumblebee—he needed to know.

_(I couldn't save you. I'm so sorry.)_

But once more, Optimus surprised him. "No. As I have said, I was not Bumblebee's sole creator- the others working on his spark-less body wanted to build the perfect shock trooper, a warrior that could survive on the front lines and keep fighting even with injuries that would normally prove incapacitating."

Sam leaned forward and pressed his forehead against the steering wheel, heart twisting into knots at the thought of sweet, sensitive, gentle Bee being sent to fend for his life against wave after crashing wave of advancing Decepticons. Feeling abruptly ill, he would have traded an arm (preferably the broken one) for a sick bag so he wouldn't foul Optimus' interior with hurl whiff.

"But he's not," he whispered hoarsely, stumbling over the contradiction in the story, "He's not a shock trooper. He's a scout."

"Yes. And that is partially my doing, though mostly his. You see, I could not persuade the others to leave Bumblebee a functionless protoform- that is, one without a pre-designed purpose hard wired into their shells before being given a spark. So I returned in secret after they had gone and erased all traces of shock trooper programming. I left Bumblebee, in essence, a blank slate. Though I could not in good conscience leave him weaponless, I wanted to give him the chance to develop according to the urgings of his spark and his spark alone."

A whirling noise that could have been a sigh came from the truck. "To my mingled relief and chagrin, Bumblebee proved not only to be an exceptional warrior, but a talented scout as well, perhaps the best our planet has seen since the Golden Age. But I held him back, never sending on any of the most dangerous missions and never sending him out alone. Like any human teenager-" his voice took on a pointed humor, making Sam flush again, "-he was eager to prove himself. After a while, the war began to turn in our favor and I felt confident enough to send him alone on his first mission to scout an asteroid mine in a relatively low-risk area. I thought he would be perfectly safe." A long, regretful pause during which the very air thickened with years of nurtured sorrow. His voice grew softer, becoming almost too low to hear. "I was wrong."

Together they sat in silence for an unmeasured eternity of time, watching the vaporous fog thicken and begin to creep across the deck like the formless essence of restless souls, of painful memories.

Horrified that he thought he knew where this story was going, Sam didn't want to hear the rest. Hearing it would make it real, and he couldn't stand the thought of anything awful happening to his best friend- especially something he could neither prevent nor fix. And yet gnawing curiosity began to eat away at his insides, consuming him with an itch he could not scratch.

Finally, he worked up enough courage to clear his throat and ask with a hoarse voice, "What happened?"

Again Optimus emitted a whirring noise that somehow conveyed oceans of despair and remorse- tears from a being that could not cry. "...There was an ambush waiting at the mine. The Decepticons had hoped the I would come in person, and when they captured Bumblebee instead they decided to take out their disappointment on him. ...Those were the longest three weeks of my life."

Sam's fingers gripped the steering wheel so hard he thought it might snap in his grip. Helpless anger set his teeth on edge, giving him the furious strength to ignore the painful protests of his broken arm. A fractured bone was nothing, _nothing_ compared to what he could only imagine Bumblebee had gone through _('...I have endured torture far worse than anything S7 could ever hope to do...'_). Oh, _Bee_...

"When we found him," Optimus continued, "his voice box had been mangled beyond repair. One of the Decepticons we interrogated revealed that his captors could not force Bumblebee to reveal any information, not even after two weeks of torture that had broken Autobots older, stronger, and wiser than he... So they ripped out his throat so they would not have to listen to him scream."

Forget puking. All of Sam's insides abruptly vanished, creating a vacuum so strong that the agony of it threatened to crush him into a little speck. He couldn't breathe. _(What kind of evil would chain down an angel down and tear out its wings?)_

"You mean he- he didn't crack? They did all that and he still didn't betray you?" He gasped out with the last little bit of air in his lungs.

"No." The word held a note of almost spiritual wonder. "Bumblebee was, and is, the most loyal being I have ever encountered in the universe. You cannot imagine how much it pains him to know he hurt you."

"But it was an accident!" Sam insisted, "He thought I was a Decepticon or something-"

"Yet no matter how well intentioned his actions were, he still hurt you," Optimus cut across him, "More than that, he feels that he has shattered your trust in him. He is dedicated to you as he is to no one else, not even me. And he feels that, as your guardian, he has failed you."

Sam thought of mentioning the way his 'guardian' had blocked his texts and stubbornly refused to let him apologize, but decided against it. Though he still didn't want to find out what Optimus had been planning behind his back, anything was better than the major league Bumblebee-inspired guilt trip he was currently on. Mentioning the scout's refusal to talk to him would only further the conversation in the same painful vein.

"So what does all this have to do with the 'thrice indebted' thing?"

"When Bumblebee was finally rescued," Optimus went on, seeming to ignore him, "He was not the same Autobot I had sent off on his first solo mission. In some indefinable way, the part of him that was Bumblebee had died. He functioned as flawlessly as ever, never missing a step in battle, never losing a target he tracked. But his shell had become as hollow as before being granted a spark. I believe the human term to describe it would be 'souless'."

"He's fine now, though! What does this have to do with-"

"Bumblebee is now 'fine', Samuel James Witwicky, for the sole reason that he has found someone to live for again. He has found_ you_."

Caught breathless in a stunned, limp haze, Sam's mind flashed back to his breakdown in the janitor's closet when Bee had told him that, no matter Sam's residual guilt about the matter, the human had saved him in a way far more important than freeing him from Simmons' clutches. At the time he had gone along with it to pacify Bee, though his mind had continued to assault his heart with poison-tipped arrows of guilt and endless snapshots from the night where he had failed the most important task ever given to him_ (ice, so much ice, struggles weakening against the cold, and still the voiceless angel _screamed_-)_. He had never considered that Bee was sharing a carefully guarded slice of his heart, bearing it to his scrutiny, leaving himself open for a brutal attack. He had not really believed that the alien's words might be _true_. Kind, yes. Pacifying, definitely. But _true_?

Sam couldn't speak, not even one tiny little word (_no words existed for this- something too powerful to be expressed with things as mundane as sounds or letters)._

"Bumblebee is very dear to me, Sam," Optimus continued. "Dearer than my own spark. I owe you my life for a third time because in saving him, you saved me."

Breathe in, hold it, breathe out. Lean forward, elbows to knees, and cover prickling eyes with a shaking hand. He was only Sam. Just Sam. He wasn't stronger, faster, smarter, kinder, or better than anyone else. There was no reason for Bumblebee to have chosen to befriend _him_.

That thought abruptly spiraled out of control, tainting his moment of awe with the bitter tang of reality. Despite what Optimus said, Bee was probably only his friend out of convenience—most likely, the alien had simply latched onto the first source of kindness and acceptance he had encountered. Not that Sam would go back in time and trade places with someone else to test that theory; he was worshipfully grateful he had been chosen, whether by luck or cosmic design. Forcing down the snide little voice whispering that he was not worthy, Sam slowly straightened up.

"Alright. Three times, then. You say you're in my debt three times over. That means...what, exactly?"

Once again, though Optimus gave no outwardly signal that could be perceived by the five senses, Sam felt a shift in the Peterbilt's mood, this time from one of solemn reflection to tense resolution. The tense part he could understand given his previous outburst, but the curious flavor of stony resolve mystified him. And terrified him. (And he must have been slipping a gear, because he had no way of sensing either from a truck).

"It means that my life belongs to you now, and it is incumbent upon my honor that I take whatever steps necessary- no matter how radical- to ensure your protection."

"Wait." The fingers of his good hand curled tightly around the edge of the seat. "Sorry, but you're not making any sense. Why separate me from Bumblebee if you're trying to protect me? I only have, I don't know-" he unclenched his hand and began to count off on his fingers, "-about, oh say, _several dozen _alien robots trying to turn me into decorative wall art!"

Ever serene, Optimus did not react to his shout. "Which is why you will not be separated from Bumblebee-"

YEEEESSS! He shoots, he scores! Sam could have almost kissed the Peterbilt right on the gear shift for having the balls to stand up to the snot-nosed, brief-case totting politicians, give them the Optimus version of a triumphant middle finger, and do whatever he felt like anyway. Which, in this case, seemed to include keeping the dynamic duo (_not real, never real, clinging from need not love_) together.

"-rather, you will be accompanying us back to NEST headquarters after we dock in India."

And his storm of thunderous mental applause ground to an abrupt halt. It took several tries to process the statement, running it backwards and forwards under an internal microscope. Even once he pieced together the literal meaning of the words, the implications behind it remained elusive. Unthinkable.

"...What?"

"I don't know if you realize this, Sam," Optimus imparted hesitantly, "But no one beyond ourselves and select key officials within the US government know that the Fallen's power has been eradicated. The rest of the world is still looking for you."

"Yeah, I know," he waved it off, wishing the alien would get to the point, "I saw the story running on every news station in the world before the twins- before I ended up in the hanger. So yeah, it sucks, but I know. I'm hoping they'll put out a statement or something that will get everyone off my back. But what did you mean by that thing you said before? The NEST thing?"

"Regardless of my personal feelings on the matter, we cannot inform the rest of the world of what occurred in Egypt. To do so would be to give vital information to the Decepticons in the process of 'getting everyone off your back'," He tone shifted, becoming almost sympathetic, "In the interest of protecting you from your fellow humans, you will be coming with us back to NEST where your location will be unknown and where we can better protect you."

The taste of sour bile filled Sam's mouth, causing him to grimace.

"I may not like it, but I guess that makes sense. I was kinda flipped out about that, before—it's not exactly pleasant finding out that you have, 'Wanted, dead or alive,' tattooed across your forehead." He crushed the maggots of panic that began to wriggle in his gut as he spoke, concentrating on breathing around the stone in his chest. _I am so screwed_. "How long do you think I will have to stay?"

No answer. The truck around him seemed, for a moment, to be nothing more than a dark, silent hunk of metal. The fog had become a restless white wall, devouring the fight deck around them and setting them adrift in nothingness. "Optimus?" His voice began to waver without his permission, "I'll only have to stay with you guys for a few months, right? Just until this whole thing blows over?"

"There are more than your fellow humans to consider, Sam."

Something very, very cold began to creep up his spine. "...No..."

"Even if, eventually, all the world's governments cease hunting you- and even if, in a perfect world, every last psychopathic individual ceases to hunt for you-"

"No."

"-The Decepticons will never rest until they have obliterated you."

"No!"

"And while you are around them," he added softly, "your family is in danger as well. Mikaela is in danger."

"Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK!"

Optimus was right, of course. Arrogant robot always had to be right. The Decepticons had already lost everything- Cybertron, the Fallen, even the Allspark. And the most dangerous enemy was always the one with nothing left to lose.

Though every fiber of his being longed to scream in denial—though he longed to rebel against a universe apparently determined to take everything he held dear away from him- there was no part of the robot's reasoning he could refute. If he had taken the time to think about it, he would have probably figured all of those things out on his own, though he would never have come to the conclusion that it was in his best interest to uproot him from his home. He would have found a way to make it work. Optimus just didn't want to give him a chance.

Shoving the angry, foaming-at-the-mouth part of him into a deep hole in his mind, he consciously relaxed his shoulder muscles, uncurled his fists (ignored the throbbing of his arm beneath the cast) and lounged back against the seat, palms open on his knees. Calm. Reasonable.

"I'm going home, and you can't stop me." Okay, so maybe more infantile than reasonable, but at least his voice remained steady and at a normal decibel level. "And if you try to, remember that there are at least 380 million people who object to kidnapping. Especially kidnapping a fellow American."

One human was no match for an Autobot, but he doubted even Optimus was deluded enough to try his luck at over a million to one odds. But when the peterbilt spoke again, he didn't seem to be backing down.

"Galloway called me while you were being fitted with a cast."

With a start, Sam remembered that slimy git had been brow beaten into assisting Thatcher and Optimus with their plan. Wow, that guy worked fast.

"As of approximately 45 minutes ago," the Autobot continued, "You are no longer a citizen of the United States."

The words hit him like ten thousand volts, momentarily stopping his heart.

American citizenship- two words coveted by millions of people all over the world. The topic of dreams, books, and life-changing voyages to a land unknown. Never one to be particularly patriotic, Sam had nevertheless come to realize how thankful he was to have been born in the USA after seeing the state of the slums in Egypt. He had rights, liberties, voting privileges and those sorts of things; he could make fun of a senator's big nose all he wanted without fearing retribution. America- and, by extension, California- may not have been perfect (far from it, in fact) but it was his _home_. He'd never even been to so much as Canada before being teleported to the Egyptian desert. America was quirky, multi-lingual and multi-racial, bullying and protecting, irritating and endearing. He didn't know _how_ to be anything else but American.

Yet somehow, without his knowledge, it had all been taken away from him. No more driver's license, no more passport, no more constitutional rights. Just as happened in all those cheesy sci fi movies, he'd been erased. Sam didn't trust himself to speak. More than that, he didn't know what, if anything, to say.

Optimus seemed to be waiting for him to react. Well, he wasn't going to do him the courtesy of either erupting in vengeful rage or pretending that what he had done was okay. So he simply sat there, staring at the fog with unblinking eyes, concentrating on nothing beyond existing.

After a few moments, the Autobot offered, "It was contingent upon our signing the treaty with your government that they relinquish their claim to you as a US citizen. I assure you that it was not easy to persuade them to let you go."

"Is that what you did to piss them off?" he whispered from between unmoving lips, his momentarily stunned mind coughing back to life and beginning to sort through everything that had been said, looking for a loop hole, a way out.

"My manner of persuasion was, I believe, the true cause of the uproar," If Sam had been inclined to care, he would have laughed at the fact that Optimus actually sounded _embarrassed_. "According to Cybertronian custom, it is my right to assert my claim to you, resorting to combat if necessary. When they first balked at the idea of revoking your citizenship, I demanded to know who, ultimately, held the loyalty of all citizens," his tone dipped, growing sly, "I was informed that, in theory, the person through whom all citizenship is confirmed is the President."

The revelation jostled Sam from his funk. Optimus had actually gone all the way up to the _President _to screw him over? That took some serious dedication. But then he mind caught up with the implications of the rest of the admission, and he choked on his own spit.

"'Combat'?" He repeated, incredulous, "You would have fought the President for me? Like, with your bodies and not with words or an exchange of lawsuits or something?"

"Most likely it would not have come to that."

"Oh. Well good." Then, "Only 'most likely'? As in, there's a .01% chance you might have?"

Optimus rumbled a laugh. "Their reaction was very similar to yours. Although I issued no threat, my popularity in Washington has declined somewhat in these past few days."

A rush of hate pounded through him for a moment at the fact that Optimus seemed to find the whole thing to be slightly amusing. There was nothing funny about any part of the situation. Nothing at all.

"It doesn't matter," he spat bitterly, then, replaying his own turn of phrase in his head, repeated with some measure of hope, "It doesn't matter. See, I may not be a citizen anymore, but that won't stop me from going back there. -Unless of course you _'persuaded' _them not to let me over the border."

"No, I did not." All the humor abruptly faded from Optimus' voice, "Whatever you may be inclined to think of me at the moment, I did not request that the United States revoke your citizenship in order to force you to comply with my wishes. Rather, you could not simultaneously be under the jurisdiction of the Autobots and the United States at the same time."

The perplexing revelation washed over him like a bucket of ice water to the face, instantly cooling his boiling anger. He shied away from the implications in his mind, not wanting to look at them or accept them.

"Okay, now you lost me."

"Having you reside at NEST will provide some measure of protection against the Decepticons. Changing your political status from private citizen to human ambassador to the Autobots will provide you with the necessary diplomatic immunity to protect you against others of your kind."

His jaw fell slack and dropped to his knees. "'Ambassador'?" he parroted breathlessly.

"On paper, in any case. Putting you under our protection as an honorary Cybertronian is a necessary step to keeping you from the hands of people who would turn you over to the Decepticons without a second thought. This way, no one on earth can attempt to hold you against your will without serious intergalactic complications." Optimus hesitated, then sighed through the vents (_another act, all an act, pretending to be less alien_). "I apologize if I have caused you any undue distress by not revealing my plans until now. I had hoped to allow you a week more of a relatively normal existence without having to worry about the coming changes in your future."

Logic whistled and cheered, tactlessly informing him that he should be thrilled to have a safety net of protection in place for when he re-entered a world turned against him. And on some levels he was. Not only would he get to get to be with Bumblebee again (_my friend, my-, my- what?)_, he wouldn't have to pace his room at three am, restlessly moving to stare out at the sky from every window in the house, looking for the alien jet from his nightmares riding steadily closer on the air. And what kid didn't squeal and jump up and down at the thought of being practically adopted by uber-cool alien robots?

But he wasn't a kid anymore. And his inner child had been shot to death in all the days leading up to Mission city as he learned that not all monsters were big and ugly (_how could they keep hurting him? How could they sneer and spit at the gentle alien writhing under their guns? How could they keep cutting him with those __knives __as he squealed in agony, strapped to a concrete slab?_). He was 18. He didn't want to play make believe anymore- he wanted to grow up, go to college, get a degree, get a good job, marry Mikaela and end up with six dozen kids, a house in the suburbs and a dog.

But now, none of it would come to pass. His own country had given him away; he was owned by a group of aliens with powers that verged on godly. He couldn't go back to college, because the Decepticons might find him and kill him. He couldn't go back to his own house, because the Decepticons might find him and kill him. He couldn't go hide under an overpass, because a random stranger might find him, knock him over the head with a rock, and give him to the Decepticons, who would kill him.

And he couldn't go crash on Mikaela's couch, because the Decepticons might find him and hurt girlfriend to get to him.

"So. NEST, huh? Do they have cable? Or air conditioning?"

By that time the medicine had mostly worn off, but as he pulled his knees to his chest he started to giggle a little anyway_. (can't go home can't go home)_

Optimus gave a bewildered little click, but replied, "Yes. On both counts."

"Do they have a couch or something I could sleep on? I'm not too sure I want to bunk with a bunch of Marines- I've never been a gluten for punishment."

Tiny, spasmodic shakes like the scrawling lines of a seismograph worked their way across his shoulders and down his back, crawling along his arms and legs, wedging themselves into his hands and feet. _(no more dumpy room, no more mojo, no more seeing Dad working on his grass)_

"A couch would not be sufficient in the long term. You will find that a room as been prepared for your arrival, one that you do not have to share with any of the soldiers living part time on base."

"Wow. You really do like to plan ahead, don't you?"

His clothes may have still been slightly damp, but the warm air drifting from the vents should have ensured that he would not be the slightest bit cold. And yet his skin felt like ice. _(no more Miles, no more visits to the lake, no more annoying Trent, no more of mom's disastrous cooking)_

Instead of answering his rhetorical question, Optimus asked, "Sam, are you alright?", as if such a thing as 'alright' was even remotely possible under the circumstances.

"No, I'm not alright!" he snapped, fisting his good hand so he wouldn't have to watch his fingers tremble (_no more of Dad's stupid pranks, no more Saturday morning waffles, no more shakes at the Wendy's down the street_). He gulped down a few swallows of air, trying to get himself under control. He felt like a ball kicked way up into the clouds- he had no idea where he would land, or even if he would land safely. "Will I at least get visiting privileges?" He asked sarcastically.

"Unfortunately, that will not be possible," Optimus refused him, though not unkindly. "The risk of the Decepticons discovering our whereabouts would be significantly higher if passenger craft were seen going frequently to and from NEST headquarters."

_(no more Mikaela, no more Mom, no more Dad, no more Mojo, no more Miles- no more home, no more home, no more home, no more home, no more home-)_

"It's always always _always_ the Decepticons!" he shouted, voice emerging slightly strangled. "I can't sleep at night because of them! My best friend seems dead half the time because of them! I can't go to college because of them! And NOW you tell me I'll never see my family or my girlfriend because of the _Decepticons_- I'll never, ever get to see them again, because if I get within a hundred miles of them they might get MURDERED by a Decepticon!"

His face screwed up so tightly in pain that the muscles began to scream; he sunk his head into his hands. "For all the time I'll get to see them before I die, I might as well already be DEAD!"

Optimus had not moved once during their discussion. But at his strangled shout, the engine turned over, the head lights came on, and the Peterbilt abruptly lurched into motion. Jarred upright by the unexpected movement, Sam peered through the windshield, seeing nothing but a dense wall of mist illuminated from the twin beams of powerful light coming from Optimus. Shapes rose and fell beyond the shimmering curtain as Optimus drove forward- a jet, a fuel hose, another jet- making it difficult to discern where they were heading. He had the feeling, however, that Optimus was driving down the length of the ship.

"What's going on?"

Optimus didn't answer.

He leaned forward for a better view out the front window, watching the metal decking roll away beneath them- and suddenly the edge of the ship loomed into view, beyond which lay a hundred foot cliff into the ocean. His heart started to beat faster.

"Optimus, what are you doing?"

The edge of the ship rolled swiftly closer, and the Peterbilt showed no signed of turning.

"Optimus, you're heading for the side!"

Still no answer, but the seat belt took on a life of its own and slithered down over his shoulder, clicking into place.

Five feet. The truck wasn't slowing down.

"Optimus!"

Three feet. One.

-and the front axle of the truck lurched out into open space. Sam screamed as the cab tipped precariously, nose tilting down to give him an intimate view of the roaring waters so far below. He clutched at the seat belt, pressing his body tightly back against the seat as though he could somehow melt through it. His feet scrabbled at the floorboard, finding no purchase.

His heart tried to beat itself out of his chest as the whole truck creaked, shuddered, and finally settled, leaving them balanced precariously on the edge of the ship, gazing down into the churning black ocean. The yellow head lights cut a shining swath through the night air, reminding him of that scene from Jurassic Park where the trailer, lights still ablaze, had dangled from a tree just before falling and crashing into the forest floor a thousand feet below.

For several extraordinarily tense minutes, he continued to cringe away from the windshield, expecting at any moment to die as the truck slipped the rest of the way and sent them hurtling into the water. But when his mind caught up with his instincts, he realized that he was not inside of a truck- he was inside of a _transformer_. If Optimus did not want to go for a swim, his Peterbilt disguise would not fall. The whole thing was merely a demonstration.

"Judging from your reaction," the Autobot began in a clipped tone, "I would have to conclude that you do not, in fact, want to die."

"Of course I don't want to die!" Sam wailed hysterically, wondering what fruity alien thought processes would have led him to believe that he did.

"Maybe not right now, at this moment, when faced with the actual fact, but merely suggesting that 'I might as well be dead!'-" Sam flinched, hearing his own wild voice wail through the speakers. Had he really sounded that desperate, that lost? "-implies that you have given it at least a minimum of thought."

"So what?" He came back defiantly, now confident enough that Optimus wasn't really trying to off him to challenge the Autobot, despite the fact that he was still plastered to the back of the seat. "It's my life! Or are you going to tell me that it isn't any more?"

Optimus clicked quietly to himself for a while, then said, much more calmly, "I have observed you to be a very warm-hearted, caring, and generous being. But to try to take your own life, or to recklessly throw it away, would be extraordinarily selfish."

"How? It would only affect me!"

Instead of answering, a holographic screen opened up and covered the windshield, blocking out the lonely night. Familiar faces, familiar events, began to flash brightly over the intangible surface: Mikaela kissing him after Mission City, Bumblebee requesting to be his guardian, his parents hugging him with tearful faces on the desert floor, and so many other moments he had forgotten but that warmed him to the core. And from the speakers began to drift a jumble of voices, weaving around him as if in a dream: 'I'm glad I got in that car with you', 'I will go where ever you go, Sam', 'I'm not leaving you! I'm not leaving you!', 'Don't you dare die on me, Sam!'- his family, his girl friend, his guardian, and even Rachet and Ironhide, all talking to or about _him_, all saying in some small, indefinable way, 'We love you.'

Listening to the affirmations of affection, watching the continuous stream of his friends and family holding him, calling for him, fighting for him, with a loyalty that made his heart feel like it would burst, he realized that Optimus was right. If he ended up killing himself or getting himself killed, he would not be the only one to suffer. He couldn't quite believe that they wouldn't be able to go on with their lives without him, but Optimus' message was clear- if you die, they will die too.

Unable to bear seeing emotion so painfully pure any longer, Sam closed his eyes and bowed his head. Immediately, the recordings went silent and the holo screen darkened away. When he opened his eyes, he came face to face with the foreboding darkness once more. The ocean hissed and roared. Like Megatron.

"I guess I see your point," he chuckled weakly. But once more his heart was drawn to Mikaela and the chuckle died. "I love her, Optimus." He refused to believe the statement sounded like a plea. "She's...well, she's my girlfriend. The girl friend/ boy friend thing doesn't work out too well over long distances, especially without the possibility of parole." He worried his bottom lip. "If I somehow became selfish enough to ask her to leave her life behind, could she come stay with me? You know, permanently."

"Though you probably no longer believe me at this point, I _am_ sorry, Sam. As our ward you have full clearance to live on base. Mikaela does not," Optimus paused, as though debating whether or not to continue. Apparently he decided against it, because the next moment the truck shifted into reverse and pulled its front axle back onto the deck with a jaw-rattling bump. Backing far enough away from the edge to turn around, Optimus drove back the way they had come.

The truck pulled up beside the observation tower only a few seconds later, causing Sam to blink in surprise. It had seemed like a much longer drive on the way out, but he supposed that on the return trip he was sufficiently distracted by his own thoughts not to accurately mark the passage of time. The door popped open, creating a straight line of freedom from the interior of the cab to the door back into the ship. But the seatbelt had not retracted, and Sam could sense Optimus hesitating again, having an internal fight with himself.

Feeling like an ass for how he had treated Optimus when the guy was only trying to help him, Sam reached out and lightly set a hand on the dash.

"You can tell me. I promise I won't go spreading rumors," he tried to joke. It was obviously the wrong tactic to use, because the Autobot leader immediately sealed up like a clam.

"Get some rest, Sam," he advised wearily, unlatching the seat belt and sucking it back into the wall. For a moment the Autobot paused, the constant, sub-aural whirring of his internal mechanisms deepening in tone the way Bumblebee's did when scanning. "And give Bumblebee the chance to talk to you."

"I did!" He defended himself, hopping down from the cab. "I sent him almost a hundred e-mails, but he's been blocking me."

"Ah." Whirl. "Then I should probably tell you that he's been following you ever since you left the hanger."

Sam's steps faltered to a halt. He swung around to face the disguised transformer.

"He's been following me? How? Some of those corridors around the infirmary are really tiny, and the twins had trouble just fitting into a stair well!"

"Yes, the infamous antics of the twins," Optimus said, his normally level voice coming as close to a growl as Sam had ever heard it, tone midnight black. He shivered, suddenly understanding what Mikaela had been talking about and praying that he never encountered a truly pissed Optimus. "You forget that the twins are merely battlefield soldiers while Bumblebee is a skilled and highly trained scout. If he does not want you to know that he is following you, you will never know."

The night had only grown cooler as the fog rolled in- Sam wrapped his arms around himself, grimacing as he realized that his jacket was soaked though. It was like swimming, but with air.

"Did he try to follow me out here?"

"He _did_ follow you out here. He was very upset when I began to drive towards the edge of the ship. At that point, I had to order him back inside."

Thinking of the way Optimus had been able to stealthily watch him from the observation tower, he shivered with awe at the thought that Bee was about a hundred times sneakier. He hadn't even realized the yellow bot was _there_. It was a very good thing, he reflected, that the Autobots were on their side.

"Oh." Realizing that he was just standing there awkwardly, he turned to go back inside. "Well, 'night."

"Good night."

And that was that, he supposed. Though just before the metal door fell closed in his wake, he peeked back out at Optimus, who had not moved. Strange how a truck could seem so sad. Somehow he knew that it had nothing to do with their painful encounter, but something even more painful, something the Autobot had twice come so close to telling him. But then the metal door clanged back into place, harsh fluorescent light blotting out the memory of night. And Optimus was left alone in the dark.

….

9 o'clock. Far too early for any self-respecting teenager to be thinking about sleep. Yet after a horribly twisted day, Sam wanted to do nothing more than to climb into bed, pull the covers up over his head, and tell himself that monsters didn't really exist until he believed it enough to get to sleep. No question about it- informing his parents that they would never get to see their baby boy again could wait until the next day.

Updating them on the fact that he had broken his arm couldn't wait, however. If he put it off, it would only raise searching questions about where he had been and what he had been doing. He might be able to stretch the time he spent in the infirmary and make it three hours while still sounding believable. Twelve hours, however, would be a different story.

...But maybe he could put it off just a little longer. Four hours, the perfect length of time if one of the broken bones had stabbed through his flesh and needed to be set back in place with surgery. Plenty of time to flush Bumblebee out of the wood work and bring him out of his funk.

Turning a corner where one hallway t-boned into another, Sam paced about fifteen feet down the corridor, pulled off one shoe, and cried out, "Oh no! My shoe!" Sounded totally fake, but hopefully it would get the job done. He tossed his shoe towards the intersection, watching it ricochet of the wall and bounce out of sight.

Then he waited, damp, cold, and shoeless, hoping that his shameless emotional ploy would work.

Just when it seemed like he might have to resort to something more drastic, the shoe came flying silently back into view, tumbling to a stop only a few feet away from him.

Grinning in triumph, Sam picked up the returned shoe and slid it back onto his foot.

"Alright, Bee. I know you're there. So come on out with your hands up!"

The scout neither answered nor deigned to slink into view, though he surely must have known Sam was waiting for him. Sam crushed the thought that his yellow friend had fled back the way he had come after chucking the shoe. If he had, Sam would hunt him down. He l- cared about him too much to let whatever was going on continue for much longer.

But at long last, Bumblebee gave up on his empty space impression and crept around the corner. The hallway was hardly large enough to fit three men abreast, yet somehow the scout's lithe, flowing stride allowed him to pass unhindered—though his mechanical body filled the space, it did not seem the slightest bit crowded.

"Sam." The robot greeted, turning towards him with his arms held behind his back. Sam wondered about that- was it to help him slip through small spaces, or was he carrying something with him he didn't want the human to see?

"That was too easy," he accused gently, "You knew I wanted to talk to you and let me find you out."

"Yes," Bee admitted, crouching down to be on eye level with him, though he remained a careful distance away, out of arms reach. "I overheard the last portion of your conversation with Optimus."

"But not the rest of it?"

"He had sealed his cab against sensor intrusion. He knew I was watching."

The suspicion that perhaps Bumblebee didn't know Optimus's plan tickled the back of his mind. "Do you already know what Optimus has arranged? About me, I mean. Me and what's going to happen in the next few days."

"I do. As does Ratchet. But we were both sworn to secrecy."

A revelation dawned on him, and Sam snapped his fingers. "Oh duh! That's what they were arguing about during the video conference shtick, wasn't it?"

"Yes," Bumblebee shifted, leaning forward slightly, then yanking himself away. As if he were afraid. As if he were restraining himself. "Ratchet has grown fearful about the impact your state of mind has been having on your body. He was of the opinion that Optimus should tell you sooner rather than later. Optimus disagreed."

Sam found himself becoming lost in Bumblebee's shining blue optics, leaning closer and closer as if to peer through their depths and into his soul. And then he shook himself, remembering Optimus' chilling tale of what had occurred to the scout. Suddenly he didn't want to see what ghosts lingered behind Bumblebee's eyes. To distract himself, he turned his face away, hugging himself through his wet clothes, and asked, "What about you? What side of the table were you on?"

Bumblebee didn't answer him. His gaze followed Sam's arms, lingered on his cast, and sharpened to a diamond-edged alertness as a tiny shiver passed through his frame. He shifted forward again with the same tightly leashed and vaguely frightening intensity, then stopped whatever he had planned to do, changed his mind, and brought his arms out from behind his back- drawing with them a fuzzy yellow blanket.

Sam's face cracked into a smile and he laughed, delighted, at the sight of the faded yellow fabric worn impossibly soft with age.

"Awe, Bee! Come on, I'm not that cold!"

"But you are wet," the scout pointed out, "Which will exacerbate the problem."

Sam held himself forcibly still as Bumblebee did a little hop-step forward and brought the blanket towards him. His earlier terror, though mostly erased, had not entirely dissipated. Despite his ferocious mental commands, his body acted against his orders and bent away from the approaching hands and the length of yellow softness draped between them (...tortured him for three weeks...tore out his vocalizer- a feral claw pinning him with metallic strength, cannon charging up for an annihilating blast, the friendly Bee consumed by the cruel Hornet that cared for nothing but survival-).

Picking up on the motion, Bumblebee froze, then unwillingly began to retreat, emitting wave after wave of cloying sorrow and shame. Sam wasn't going to stand for that.

"Nu-uh. No way. We are not going to do this staying away from each other thing, because it's only been a few hours and I'm already sick of it." He stepped forward, hardening his muscles- _don't flinch, damnit_!- and demanded, "I want my blanket. You were right, I am cold. And I don't think I'm supposed to get this cast wet-" Bumblebee's optics once more slipped to his plastered arm, "-so thank you. Thank you for being the most thoughtful guardian ever and bringing me a blanket so I wouldn't have to be cold."

The impossibly blue optics snapped back to his face, glassy and unreadable.

"You scare me when you won't talk to me," Sam admitted, "People who start giving me the silent treatment for so long are usually pissed enough at me to try to push me out in front of a bus."

Bumblebee emitted a faint hissing noise that seemed almost pained. "I was not angry with you, Sam," he replied softly, lowering his face even closer to the human, "If anything I was angry with myself. -And I would crush any bus before it had the chance to hit you."

Not giving his human a chance to react to this weirdly intense declaration, Bumblebee reached out and lightly settled the blanket around his shoulders like a cape, tugging the ends closed in the front. His giant fingers lingered there for an instant, touching the place over his heart as though to assure himself of its steady rhythm. When he moved to pull back, Sam set his good hand on top of Bee's and awkwardly patted the metal finger _(don't cringe don't cringe, it's only a hand not a cannon)._

"Then why _did_ you snub me when I tried to text you? For that matter, why didn't you bother to e-mail me back? Your inbox must be filled to bursting by now."

Bumblebee carefully extracted his hand from Sam's grip, taking two large steps away from him. Sam instantly felt colder. It seemed almost as if the scout were putting space between them- not to set the human at ease, but to prevent himself from doing...something. As with Optimus, he got the feeling that Bumblebee was holding something back, holding it back by only a fragile thread frayed to the breaking point.

Instead of directly answering his question, Bee replied, "I was watching you while you were in the infirmary, Sam. But you should know that when the doctor drew your blood and set your arm, I had to retreat some distance away. So when you called me the first time, I was not in the best frame of mind.

Cuddling down a little in the blanket (_don't sniff it, don't look like you're crazy enough to miss Bee's scent)_, he hazarded a guess at the reason behind his friend's strange behavior.

"What, are you afraid of blood?"

"No," he paused, weighing his words, then stared at him intently as he said, "I was afraid I might lose control and hurt the doctor."

Ice slid down his spine. "But _why_?" he gasped a little, not willing to admit how much that terrified him.

"Because she hurt you."

Bumblebee slunk further down the corridor. Just before he disappeared out of sight, he ducked his head back around the corner, shut down one of his optics in an imitation of a reassuring wink, and commented, "You might want to check your voice mail. Mikaela's called you fourteen times in the last ten minutes."

And then the scout was gone, vanishing into the air until he again wanted to be seen.

Sam pulled out his phone and checked it. It was still on. He had fourteen missed calls.

And though the little device had not been set to vibrate, never once had it begun to ring.


End file.
